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HUR€LeWE:HD£RS JM JblTTLE:! tILK 







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The purpose of this series of books is to place before 
little folk true, attractive, and unforgettable accounts of a few 
of the makers of American literature. 

Our country began July fourth, seventeen hundred and 
seventy-six, by making history with swords and ploughshares, 
and she was very young when the first of her writers, Wash- 
ington Irving, was born, April third, seventeen hundred and 
eighty -three. Within thirty years of that time, twelve or _,^___^k-^.^ 
more children were born into this new world who later in life 
were also to write American books of enduring value and 
world-wide acceptance. 

As little children and young men Doctor Edward Everett 
Hale and Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson came in living 
touch with these brilliant writers in a way that no doubt helped 
to make them the men of worth they are, and to make them 
also the writers of many books, not a few of them for 
little folk. Most fittingly and graciously they have given 
to young readers of these Laurel Leaves from the riches 
of their living and doing. The kindly tribute of many 
other authors and friends to the little ones' interest 
is also warmly and sincerely appreciated. The 
generous and valuable permission for reprints of 
text and illustrations from Houghton, Mifflin and Com- 
pany and other publishers commands the grateful and 

faithful services of Mary E. Phillips. 

I 
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A LITTLE LIGHT 




Dr. Edward Everett Hale's Letter to 
THE Little Folk 

The Boyhood of Thomas Wentworth 

HiGGlNSON 

The Children's Longfellow 



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1 . Centrepiece : Psalm of Life 

2. Half-title: Authors. Copyright by Notman Photographic Company 

3. Frontispiece: Thou Little Child 

4. Titlepage : Marchese Ridolfo Peruzzi de' Medici ; Margherita Umberta 

Peruzzi de' Medici. Montebone photographs. By courtesy of the 
Marchesa Peruzzi de' Medici 

5. Centrepiece: Copyright page 

6. Dedication : Decoration. Edith V. Kraemer and Marion B. Kraemer. 

By permission of Geo. J. Kraemer, Esq. 

7. Centrepiece: Lew Wallace, Jr., 1895. By courtesy of Mrs. Lew 

Wallace 






i i illii M ll , i m i j iillil ypqjnj[''fTjnltmMll!^^ 



8. Preface: Decoration 

9. Centrepiece 

10. Contents: Etliel. By courtesy of Mrs. S. S. Sherman 

11. Centrepiece: Little Paul. George H. Story. By courtesy of artist 

12. Illustrations. Gwendolyn Marion and Vivien Waldo Story. By 

courtesy of Mrs. Waldo Story 

13. Edward Everett Hale, D.D. Photograph copyrighted by the Lend-a- 

Hand Society 
Marginal decoration : St. John. Murillo 

14. Dr. Hale in his study. By courtesy of S. S. McClure 

15. Dr. Hale with Dr. Holmes in the latter's study. By courtesy of 

S. S. McClure 

16. Dr. Hale and his children. By courtesy of S. S- McClure 

17. Shepherd of Jerusalem. By permission of Soule Art Publishing Co. 

18. The Good Shepherd. Molitar. By permission of Soule Art Publish- 

ing Co. 
Guardian Angel. Plockhorst. By permission of Soule Art Pub- 
lishing Co. 

19. Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Photograph by Marceau. By 

courtesy of Colonel Higginson 

20. The Landing of the Pilgrims. From an old print 

Rev. Francis Higginson. From " American Explorers." By courtesy 
Longmans, Green, & Co. 

21. Rev. John Higginson. From miniature. By courtesy of Colonel 

Higginson 
Old House at Guilford, Conn. From a photograph. By courtesy 
of Colonel Higginson 

22. Home of John Hancock. From an old print 

John Hancock. Copley. From a photograph copyrighted by 
Baldwin Coolidge 

23. Stephen Higginson, Jr. From a miniature. By courtesy of Colonel 

Higginson 
Louisa Storrow Higginson. From a porcelain. By courtesy of 
Colonel Higginson 

24. Colonel Higginson's Birthplace. By courtesy of Mr. Bachelder 

25. Colonel Higginson of Civil War time. By courtesy of Houghton, 

Mifflin & Co. 

26. Colonel Higginson's Loyal Legion Badge 



27. Edward Everett. From an old print 

28. The Village Blacksmith. Herring. By permission of Soule Art 

Publishing Co. 

29. Birthplace of Oliver Wendell Holmes. From a photograph copy- 

righted by Wilfred H. French 

30. Mount Auburn. From an old print. By courtesy of Charles 

Goodspeed 

31. Harvard Square. From an old print. By courtesy of Charles 

Goodspeed 
Marginal decoration : " Old Cambridge ' ' and " Life of Birds.' ' Essays 
by T. W. Higginson 

32. The Washington Elm. From an old print. By courtesy of Charles 

Goodspeed 
Marginal decoration : * * In a Fair Country." Essay by T. W. Higginson 

33. Henry D. Thoreau. By courtesy of Charles Goodspeed 

34. Ralph Waldo Emerson. By courtesy of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 

35. Colonel Higginson at twenty. From a daguerreotype. By courtesy 

of Colonel Higginson 
Colonel Higginson's home at twenty. From a photograph. By 
courtesy of Colonel Higginson 

36. Marginal decoration: "The Birthday in Fairyland" story and 

" Water-lilies" essay by T. W. Higginson 

37. Marginal decoration :" Epictetus." Essay by T. W. Higginson 

38. William Wells. From a colored portrait. By courtesy of his grand- 

son, William Wells Newell 

39. Marginal decoration : " Cheerful Yesterdays." By T. W. Higginson 

40. Marginal decoration 

41. "John Brown." F. B. Sanborn. By courtesy of author and Little, 

Brown, & Co. 

42. Marginal decoration 

43. Colonel Higginson's present home 

44. Hallway of Colonel Higginson's present home. By courtesy of 

Colonel Higginson 

45. Marginal decoration : " Procession of the Flowers." Poem by T. W. 

Higginson 

46. Marginal decoration : " Procession of the Flowers " 

47. Marginal decoration 

48. Interior of building of First Religious Society, Newburyport, Mass. 

By permission of C. D. Howard 



T. W. Higginson, D.D. 1847. By courtesy of Colonel Higginson 

49. University Hall 

50. Harvard University, 1836. From an old print. By courtesy of 

Charles Goodspeed 

51. Celia Thaxter and her grandson. By courtesy of Houghton, MifTlin 

& Co. 

52. James Russell Lowell. Rowes. By courtesy of Prof. Charles Eliot 

Norton 
Mrs. Maria White Lowell. From a pencil sketch. By courtesy of 
Mrs. Estes Howe 

53. Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Margaret Fuller's Love Letters. By courtesy 

of D. Appleton & Co. 

54. Colonel Higginson as Chief-of -Staff of Governor Long. By courtesy 

of Colonel Higginson 
Governor Long. From a photograph. By permission of J. C. Purdy. 

55. Minerva, Venus, Diana. From foreign photographs 

56. Juno, Ceres, Vesta. From foreign photographs 

57. Colonel Higginson in his study. By courtesy of Colonel Higgin- 

son. The Higginson family coat-of-arms. By courtesy of Colonel 
Higginson 

58. Margherita, Queen-mother of Italy. From a photograph by Brogi, 

Florence 
Petrarch. From a photograph by Alinari, Florence 

59. Marginal decoration: "Out-door Papers," ** The Afternoon Land- 

scape." Essays by T. W. Higginson 

60. Glimpsewood. From a photograph by H. D. Allison, Dublin, N. H. 
Mrs. Thomas Wentworth Higginson. From a photograph by Tupper. 

Courtesy of Colonel Higginson 

61. Colonel Higginson and his daughter Margaret Waldo Higginson. 

By courtesy of Colonel Higginson 

62. Wentworth Higginson Barney. By courtesy of Colonel Higginson 

63. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his grandson. From a photo- 

graph. By permission 
Longfellow's Birthplace. By courtesy of Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. 

64. Silhouettes of Longfellow's father and mother. From a print 
Longfellow's cradle. From a print 

65. The Wadsworth-Longfellow Home, Portland, Me. Copyright by 

Lamson Studio 



66. Silhouette, General Peleg Wadsworth. From an old print 

67. Silhouette, Lucia Wadsworth. From an old print 

Marginal decoration : Parson Smith. " A Gleam of Sunshine." 

68. Marginal decoration : " Building of the Ship " 

69. The Longfellow Home in Gorham. Copyright by Lamson Studio 

70. Marginal decoration : Priscilla 

71. Marginal decoration: Miles Standish. Copyright by Soule Art 

Publishing Co. 

72. Marginal decoration : John Alden and Priscilla. Copyright by Soule 

Art PubUshing Co. 

73 . Wadsworth Hall, Hiram, Me. Copyright by Lamson Studio 

74. The Breezy Hall of the Hiram home. Copyright by Lamson Studio 

75. General Peleg and Elizabeth Wadsworth. From silhouettes. With 

authority 

76. Songo River. Copyright by Lamson Studio 
Marginal decoration: Mrs. Edward F. Thompson 

n . The Hanging of the Crane. From an old print 

78. Art wins the Heart. Thuman. Copyright by Soule Photo Co. 

79. Marginal decoration : " The Castle Builder " 

80. Marginal decoration : "Childhood" 

81 . The Enterprise and Boxer. By courtesy of Nathan Goold, Librarian 

Maine Historical Society 

82. Eastern Cemetery. By courtesy of Nathan Goold, Librarian Maine 

Historical Society 

83 . State Street, Portland. Copyright by Lamson Studio 

84. Marginal decoration : " The Children of the Lord's Supper " 

85. Marginal decoration : " The Windmill " 

86. " The Rainy Day " Desk. From a sketch 

87. Longfellow's book-plate and motto. With authority 

88. Marginal decoration : "Prelude" 

89. Marginal decoration : " The Bridge of Cloud " 

90. Deering's Woods. Copyright by Lamson Studio 

91. The Spinet of his Mother's Youth. Copyright by Soule Art Pub- 

Ushing Co. 

92. The Family Sitting-room. By permission 

The Evening Mail-coach. By courtesy of Miss Gertrude Higgins 

93. Winter Evenings in the Kitchen. A sketch 

94. The Light-house, Cape Elizabeth, Copyright by Lamson Studio 
Marginal decoration : Desk and trundle-bed. Sketches 



95- Portland Harbor by Moonlight. Copyright by Lamson Studio 

96. Rev. Ichabod Nichols, D.D. By courtesy of Mr. H. W. Bryant 
Marginal decoration : Old Parish Cliurch and Verse. By courtesy 

of Nathan Goold, Librarian Maine Historical Society 

97. Marginal decoration : " Flowers " 

98. Marginal decoration: Don Quixote; " Coplas de Manrique" 

99. Angelita. "Maidenhood" 

100. Lovell's Pond. Copyright by Lamson Studio 

101 . Marginal decoration : North Wind and Arrow of Criticism 

102. Marginal decoration : " New England Tragedies " 

103. Early Days of Bo wdoin College. From an old print. By courtesy 

of Charles Goodspeed 

104. Marginal decoration: " Hiawatha." From a sketch 

105. Marginal decoration : Minnehaha and Hiawatha. From sketches 

106. Marginal decoration : "Flower-de-luce" 

107. Marginal decoration :" Palingenesis " 

108. Silhouette of Longfellow in 1825. By courtesy of Nathan Goold, 

Librarian Maine Historical Society 

109. Horace. From a sketch of bust 

110. The Forest Primeval. From a photograph from nature 

111. "Evangeline." Faed. Copyright by Soule Art Publishing Co. 

112. Marginal decoration: " Castles in Spain." From an old print 

113. Professor Longfellow's Brunswick Home. By courtesy of Nathan 

Goold, Librarian of Maine Historical Society 

114. Josiah Quincy. From a print. 

115. Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh Carlyle. Copyright by Soule Art 

Publishing Co. 

116. Marginal decoration : " The Reaper and the Flowers " 

117. Craigie House pleasant window. From Austin's " Longfellow." 

By courtesy of Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. 

118. Craigie House. By courtesy of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 

119. Mrs. Craigie. From Longfellow's pen-sketch and a portrait 

120. The Hallway of Craigie House. From an old print 

121. Henry W. and Frances Elizabeth Longfellow. By courtesy of 

Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 

122. The Old Clock on the Stairs. From Austin's " Longfellow." By 

courtesy of Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. 

123. " Charles Sumner." From an old print 



124. " The Angel and the Child." Kaulbuch. Copyright by Soule Art 

Publishing' Co. 

125. " Sandalphon." Sketch 

126. Drawing-room of Craigie House. By courtesy of Mrs. J. H. Thurston 

127. To Earthly Home. Kaulbach. Copyright by Soule Art Publish- 

ing Co. 

128. Elmwood. From an old print 

129. "These are my three little girls." Read. By permission 

130. "The Wayside Inn." By permission of D. Appleton Co. 

131. " Paul Revere's Ride." From a photograph. Copyright by Holliday 

132. An Unseen Presence. Copyright by Soule Art Publishing Co. 

133. "Judas Maccabaeus." Ceseri. Copyright by Soule Art Publishing Co. 

134. Charles Appleton Longfellow. From a photograph. By permission 

135. Henry W. Longfellow. From a photograph. By permission 
Charles Sumner. From a photograph. By permission 

136. Hans Sachs. Copyright by Soule Art Publishing Co. 

Albrecht Durer. Durer. Copyright by Soule Art Publishing Co. 

137. Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. By courtesy of Miss C. F. 

Neal 

138. Dante, Beatrice, Ponte Vecchio. Sborgi. Copyright by Soule Art 

Publishing Co. 

139. Abbe Liszt. Copyright by Soule Art Publishing Co. 

140. Longfellow's Study in 1844. From' Austin's "Longfellow." By 

courtesy of Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. 

141. Longfellow. From a photograph by Warren 

Dear Little Folk. Papperitz. Copyright by Soule Art Publishing 
Co. 

142. " The Spreading Chestnut-tree." From a water-color. By permission 
"My Arm Chair." From a photograph. By permission 

143. "The River Charles." From an old print. By courtesy of Houghton , 

Mifflin & Co. 

144. Longfellow's Shady Walk. By permission 

145 . Christmas Bells. Blashfield. Copyright by Soule Art Publishing Co. 

146. Transfiguration. Raphael. Copyright by Alinari 




^UEN I was a little boy almost every 
book we had was written in England for English 
children, so it happened that we read about sky- 
larks and robin redbreasts, China oranges and 
bullfinches, and did not read about mocking birds, 
orioles, whippoorwills, and our own good sturdy 





^^i^. 

^iF 



robin, who is a bigger bird than the robin red- 
breast of England. We read about dukes and 
duchesses and parks and avenues and calendars 
and bakeshops, and we did not really know how 
our own country was governed. 
But this is all seventy years ago, and in those 
,..., seventy years a great many American men and 




_J^\f douhle ; and 




AJocJ^iny Jbird 



}|ow }]e undid, 
me 




women, who were American boys and girls as you 
are, have written American books. They have 
written books about our winters, which are very ^ 
different from English winters, and about our K 
summers, which are very different from English Y" 
summers ; about our schools, which are different ^ 
from English schools ; about our homes, which ^ 
are different from English homes ; about our trees 
and meadows and parks, which are not like Eng- 
lish trees or English meadows or English parks. 




^ 






Now, and in this book in your hand, a friend of 
mine and of yours has brought together some 
passages of poetry good for you to read, good for 
you to commit to memory, good for you to re- 
peat in the twilight as you sit on the piazza with 
papa and mamma and uncle Edward. And these 
are all written by American men and women who 
were once just such boys and girls as you are now. 
When you read them, and when you commit them 
to memory, I think you will be better able to see 
the beauty of God's world and to see in part why 
He has made it what it is. When you go to play, 
or when you swim in the water, or when you go 
to sleep on the haycock, you will know better 
how near He is to you and how much you have 
to thank Him for. 

Edward E. Hale. 

And if you are ever tempted to say a word or to do a 
thing that shall put a bar between you and your family, your 
home and your country, pray God in his mercy to take you 
that instant home to his own heaven. Stick by your family, 
boy ; forget you have a self, while you do everything for 
them. Think of your home, boy. 




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THE English Higginsons were churchmen, but 
of Puritan tendencies. Clergymen, officials, 
militia officers, and scholars at all times were 
counted within their family fold. The Reverend 
Francis Higginson was born in England in 1?58. 




■0^"'^::,,. 








He had the degree of A. M. from Cambridge Uni- 
versity in England, and later in life, for religion's 
sake, left the land of his birth. As his native 
shores faded from sight he said : " Farewell, dear 
England ! Farew^ell, the Christian church in Eng- 
land and all the Christian friends there!" He 
landed at Salem, Massachusetts, on June 29, 1629, 
and died a year later. John, his son, also a 
clergyman, was born at Claybrook, England, 1616, 
came to America with his father, was appointed 
chaplain of the fort at Saybrook, Connecticut, and 
was married in the old house still standing at 
Guilford, supposed to be the oldest house in the 
United States. He died at Salem, 1708. His son 
John was a Salem merchant and lieutenant-colonel 





MAS5. CEJ\fTIML 

FEB. Be MARCH 1789 



of the militia regiment; and in the third generation 
from this last came Stephen Higginson, born at 
Salem in 174?, who was a member of the Conti- 
nental Congress in 1783, and was the probable 
author of the once celebrated "Laco" letters, 
criticising John Hancock. He was also an officer 
in command of troops sent to quell Shay's rebellion. 
Stephen's son Stephen — the father of the subject 
of this sketch — was born at Salem, November 20, 
1770, and was one of the leading merchants of 
Boston until ruined, like many others, by Jefferson's 
embargo, after which he retired from business and 
finally became steward (now called bursar) of 
Harvard College. By his generous good-will and 





J^edmm tfme 





kindly deeds he became known far and near in his 
prosperous days as the " Howard " or " Man of 
Ross" of his day. Many trees that now make 
Harvard College yard so attractive were planted 
by him, but the lamps he hung over each entrance 
were soon put out as being thought too expensive. 
The Harvard Divinity School which he organized 
still lives. 

In 180? Stephen Higginson married a second 
wife, Louisa Storrow. She was the nineteen-year- 
old daughter of Captain Thomas Storrow — an 
English officer detained as prisoner at Portsmouth, 
New Hampshire — and of Anne Appleton, who at 
the early age of seventeen married and sailed to 
England with him in 1777. 




^olonel Higginsons hirtlipldee^ , 
X2 7 Krkland 5t Cambridge, TJIasSo 



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Young Mrs. Higginson's charm, intelligence, and 
unfailing grace won from the Honorable George 
Cabot — the social Solomon of that period — the 
following tribute: "No one received company 
better than Mrs. Higginson." 

In his " Cheerful Yesterdays," Colonel Hig- 
ginson writes : " I was born in Cambridge, Mass., 
on Dec. 22, 182?, in a house built by my father, 
at the head of what was then called * Professor's 
Row,' and is now Kirkland Street — the street 



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down which the provisional troops marched to'^ 
the Battle of Bunker Hill." Perhaps that march 
made its influence felt for young Higginson's 
future life. In 1870 "Army Life in a Black 
Regiment" was published. Here Colonel Hig- 
ginson gives his reasons for becoming a soldier, 
how he became captain of the 57th Mass. regi- 
ment, September 2?, 1862, and finally colonel of 
the 3 3d U. S. colored troops. This was the first 
regiment of free slaves mustered into national ser- 
vice. We learn from Civil War history how the 
Colonel took and held Jacksonville, Florida, was 
wounded at Wilton Bluffs, and therefore resigned 
in October, I863. In this book is a chapter called 
"The Baby of the Regiment," which will truly 
delight all little folk. 

Of the children born to Stephen Higginson, Jr., 
and his wife Louisa, Thomas Wentworth was the 
youngest, being named after his uncle, Thomas 
Wentworth Storrow. This child was only ten 
years old when his father died, and his main 
training, in consequence, came from his mother 
and his aunt. Miss Anne G. Storrow, "then 
known," the Colonel writes, "as 'Aunt Nancy' 
to all the Cambridge world. She was to my 
mother like a second self in the rearing of her 
children. Within recent date of the loss of 




^■...^«I^^!^^^^ 





O-'^:::^?^^:^"'^*^^'^^ 



her fortune, Mrs. Higginson 
makes the following note of 
her young family: " I always 
awake calm and serene. My 
children occupy my mind 
and heart, and fill me with 
gratitude and affection." 

The earliest proof on paper 
of his infancy is a note to his 
,i/ father "in Edward Everett's 

exquisite hand-writing — an 
inquiry 'for the health of the 
babe.' It was sent with some tamarinds from 
Mrs. Everett." The Colonel continues : " It is 
pleasant to think that I was at the age of seven 
months assisted toward maturity by this benefac- 
tion from a man so eminent." Further on he 
adds: "My nurse was Rowena Pratt, wife of 
Dexter Pratt, The Village Blacksmith' of Long- 
fellow's. It is amusing that Longfellow once 
asked me, many years after, what his hero's name 




* 




taHd^fT^t 




"Ayoungersister of Profes- 
sor Longfellow was a frequent 
guest, and the young poet 
himself came, in the dawning 
of his yet undeveloped fame. 
Once, and once only, Wash- 
ington Irving came there, 
while visiting a nephew who 
had married my cousin." 

In Mrs. Higginson's diary is 
noted of her elder daughter : " She knows all her 
letters at three," and of her youngest child, Thomas 
Wentworth, "he has read a good many books — 
at four years of age." Among his treasures of 
childhood is a pencilled note from a little playmate 
— a professor's daughter — who tells him, " * I am 
glad you are six years old. I shall be four in 
March.' " 

Charles Parsons, described as "a grave, prim 
little boy," nephew of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
" was my immediate playmate," says the Colonel. 




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He adds : " While we were not schoolmates, we 
were most constantly together out of school 
hours." They often "tumbled about" the very 
same library as did the Autocrat himself, in actual 
contact with books. Of these good times in this 
interesting old homestead — the poet's birthplace 
and once a landmark on the college grounds — 
and also of Dr. Holmes' father. Colonel Higginson 
writes: '*Many an hour we spent poring over 
the pictures in the large old Rees' Cyclopaedia; 
afterwards, when weary, piling up the big volumes 

pM^ptSLd^iE (^ (Xy^ Ih^o^ ^toi^.^ 







for fortifications 
to be mutually 
assailed by can- 
nonading apples 
from a perpetual 
barrel in the 
closet. Mean- 
while the kindly 
old grandfather, 
working away at 
his sermons, never 
seemed disturbed by our 
rompings; and I vividly remember one evening 
when he went to the window and, scratching 
with his knife-blade through the thick frost, 
shaped outlines of the rough brambles below 
and made a constellation of the stars above, with 
the added motto, per aspera ad astra, — then ex- 
plaining to us its meaning, that through difficulties 
we must seek the stars." Their out-of-door ram- 
bles have been happily described as follows : 
"Charles Parsons and myself, as we lay under 
Lowell's willows 'at the Causey's end, after a 




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^^^^^^^^Q^rc..^^ 






M^'T^^ri Bm^'^e ^J- 



day at Mount Auburn, — then sweet Auburn 
still ' — to sort out our butterflies, or divide our 
walnuts in autumn, chanted uproariously the 
' Hunter's Chorus ' : 

' We roam through the forest and over the mountains ; 
No joy of the court or banquet like this.' 

We always made a pause after the word ' court,' 




T^e life ^ hkwGl^ 









The^^Vashlngton Jxhrv 



and we supposed ourselves to be hurling defiance 
at monarchies." 

"Every boy of active tastes — and mine v^ere 
eminently such," writes the Colonel, " must be- 
come either a sportsman or a naturalist." Why he 
was not a sportsman appears from his pen in the 
following incident : " Coming down Divinity 
Avenue one day with an older boy, George Ware, 




In^fmr aouniry 




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who rejoiced in a bow and arrow, we stopped at 
the mulberry-tree which still stands at the head 
of the street, and he aimed at a beautiful cedar- 
bird which was feeding on mulberries. By ex- 
traordinary chance he hit it, and down came the 
pretty creature, fluttering through the air with the 
cruel wound through its breast. I do not know 
whether the actual sportsman suffered pangs of 
remorse, but I know that I did — and feel them 
yet. Later I learned from Thoreau to study birds 
through an opera-glass." 





With a thought of 
Robert Browning's an 
Emerson incident comes 
from Colonel Higgin- 
son's pen, as follows : 
*' The most charming of 
Browning's poems is 
that in which he com- 
pares his contact with a 
man who had once seen 
Shelley to picking up an 
eagle's feather on a path. 
Every direct glimpse of a great man is an eagle's 
feather to us," the Colonel says. As a boy of 
eleven, his first eagle's feather was found on 
hearing Emerson give a lecture at the old Lyceum 
Building, Harvard Square. He thus continues : 
"In the old building there was a hole — originally 
made for a stovepipe — in the floor among the 
upper seats, which, being left open, became gradu- 
ally a stairway for us village boys, who naturally 
dropped down it very soon, with much unneces- 



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sary noise, when we got tired of lectures, which 
was usually very early. 

" Emerson set my playmates flying very soon, 
but I kept my seat; and when I descended 
decorously at the very end of the lecture, 1 was 
received with indignation and contempt by my 
playmates. I pleaded guilty, as did the old 
woman of Concord who, when asked if she 
understood Emerson's lectures, replied, ' Not a 
word, but I like to go and see him stand up there 
and look as if he thought every one was as good 
as he was/ I, too, liked to see him and hear his 
voice. This was my first eagle's feather." 

When lecturing at Concord once, he spent 
the night at Emerson's house. The home-going 
morning came in a stormy one, and the scholarly 
Emerson thought himself none too great nor good 
to put on his visitor's overshoes. Of this occa- 
sion the Colonel remarks, " Never since have I 
felt that I could have any one less eminent per- 
form that service for me.'' 

Besides a pretty fairy story written at twenty, 
and his many lovely verses for little folk, school 
children owe much to Colonel Higginson for his 













^eSetiis^ IJ^e sls^^^ 




"Young Folks' History of the United States," 
published in 187?. "Young Folks' Book of 
American Explorers," appearing in 1877, rnay 
also well claim the attention of all young 
scholars. 

We are not told at what age the boy himself 
first began school life, but the Colonel does say: 
" I went to a woman's school till I was eight, 
being then placed for five years in the large private 
school of William Wells. Mr. Wells was himself 
a graduate of Harvard, and later the Boston pub- 
lisher of Wells and Lily classics and other important 
works. He counted Daniel Webster and Edward 
Everett among his personal friends, so when a 
fire destroyed his entire stock of books, he 
began this Cambridge school, and Boston families 
highly regarded him as well qualified to prepare 
students for college. In " Cheerful Yesterdays " 
appears : " Mr. Wells was an Englishman of the 
old stamp, — erect, vigorous, manly — who ab- 
horred a mean or a cowardly boy." He was a 
master well known to spoil no child by sparing 
the rod, and is described as always carrying 
a rattan in his hand, which frequently 



V 



M 




V. 



-=^^ 



^ ^ 



leerfiil ^esterdBys 
descended on back and arm of the laggard. 
Concerning this rattan, Colonel Higginson says : 
** Being fond of study, and learning easily, I 
usually escaped the rod." Mr. Wells is said to 
have "taught nothing but Latin and Greek," 
but the joy the little lad took in learning these 
appears in the Colonel's paper " On a Latin Text- 
Book.'' Wells' own Latin Grammar was conceded 
to be "a positive boon to his scholars," and no 
doubt Mr. Wells helped on to the college Greek, 
by which in 1865 Colonel Higginson was enabled 
to translate the complete works of Epictetus, that 
old stoic of Greece who taught philosophy at 
Rome in the first Christian century. Mr. Wells' 
eldest daughter was the French teacher. It is re- 
lated that she sometimes added zeal to their learning 
that language by tapping the little boys on the 
head with her thimble. 

However, Mr. Wells encouraged physical 
as well as mental activity, **and," writes the 
Colonel, '' the boys had much ball-playing 
and running games. It was a great ad- 
vantage for outdoor training that my school 
was a mile oflf, and I paced the distance 



felt. 



i^ 








fo and fro twice a day. Sometimes I had com- 
panions — my elder brother for a time, and his 
classmates, Lowell and Story. I remember treading 
along close behind them once as they discussed 
Spenser's Taerie Queene,' which they had been 
reading, and which led us younger boys to christen 
a favorite play-place, 'The Bower of Blisse.' 
Often I went alone, made up stories as 1 went — 
little incidents or observations of my own — into 
some prolonged tale with a fine name, having an 
imaginary hero. For a long time his name was 
D'Arlon, from * Philip van Artevelde,' which my 
mother was reading to us." At other times the 
boy watched the robins, bluebirds, and insect life 
of moth and beetle. 

These Cambridge children had their dancing 
lessons from the elder Papanti in private houses. 

" We were all, it now seems to me," writes the 
Colonel, "a set of desperate little lovers, with 
formidable rivalries, suspicions, and jeal- 
ousies; we had names of our own devising 







mo 





****** 



for each juvenile 
maiden, by which 
she could be men- 
tioned without peril 
of discovery. But 
this sporting soon 
became secondary 
(we being Cambridge 
boys) to the college 
life, to which no 
girls might aspire; 
and before I was 
fourteen I myself was launched." 

No doubt right of might ruled at times, for the 
Colonel informs us he escaped : " Thanks to an 
elder brother, the strongest boy in school, I went 
free from the frequent pummellings visited by 
larger boys on smaller." This school-day right- 
might injustice was perhaps the first seedling 
indignation at unequal contest planted 
the lad's mind. Many years afterwards 






it blossomed into the active part taken by the 
young clergyman, Higginson, in the very exciting 
fugitive-slave frays before the Civil War. It was 
this spirit which led him across the path of the fa- 
mous John Brown of those uncertain days. These 
stories are well told in " Cheerful Yesterdays." 

Now and then Spanish boys came from the 
West Indies and were, '' with their dark skins and 
high-sounding names — such as Victoriano Rosello 
— as good as dime novels to us. They swore 
superb oaths, which we naturally borrowed ; and 
once they drew knives upon one another with an 
air which the ' Pirates' Own Book' offered nothing 
to surpass." 

The spirit of mischief usual to boys appeared 
" in pulleys for raising desk-lids, and in two small 
holes in every seat for needles worked by pulleys, 
for the sudden impaling of a fellow student"; 
and then "the under-desk-hidden readings of 
' Baron Trenck,' * The Three Spaniards,' and ' The 
Devil on Two Sticks'" were as exciting- 
ly attractive as stolen waters are sweet. 




■^^,^^\flmym//^j^^^ 







The spirit of chivalry was also there among those 
Wells' school lads; and that young Higginson 
was duly impressed by such refining influences is 
told us as follows : " For a time one fair girl, 
Mary Story, William Story's sister, glided to her 
desk in the corner, that she might recite Virgil 
with the older class." This incident, we are 
informed, implanted in the boy's mind the first 
idea of his life-long preference for the equal edu- 
cation for girls with boys. 





Cohml ^igginsons ^HatU^dy 




►From the 
sheltering 
ways of boy- 
hood days to 
his presenf 
ideal abid- 
ing place in 
Cambridge, 
the charm of 
happy home 
influences 
seems ever 
to have fol- 
lowed Colo- ^ 
nel Higginson. In those early years his mother, 
as the wise, kind, and gentle director of these 
influences, has made her memory almost a life 
worship with her youngest child. Concerning 
her care and affection, to-day's Literary Dean of 
Boston and Cambridge writes : " To have lain 
on the hearth-rug and heard one's mother read 
aloud is a liberal education." In the evenings 
Mrs. Higginson read all of Waverley novels to 



yf^ Umsit^ekoe hum 




?rj tte e 



Hhe hoiiy brsfjch shone 
or? 'pm old o^ky/3^ * 








tvr: 



yt^ 



\j'^^\ 



her children. Spenser's *' Faerie Queene" 
also claimed place in these readings. 

Among the thousand volumes the family saved 
from days of affluence were " Boswell's Life of 
Johnson," "Hoole's Tasso and Ariosto," "Ber- 
wick's Birds and Quadrupeds," — always a delight 
to children, — "Plutarch's Lives," Miss Burney's 
and Miss Edgeworth's works, and "Sir Charles 
Grandison." In time all these with others were 
read by the boy. It was his habit to collect all 
disused text-books in out-of-the-way places to 
make a little library of his very own. Frequent 
additions were made to this library by the gift- 
books of late issues from George Ticknor, Jared 
Sparks, and John Holmes to his aunt and brother. 





" Besides this," the Colonel writes, '' the family 
belonged to a book-club " — one of the first of 
that time. He continues: " Of this club my eldest 
brother was secretary, and I was permitted to keep, 
with pride and delight, the account of the books 
as they came and went." And yet, born and 
reared as he was in this atmosphere of books, 
book-lovers, and book-makers, breathing in the 
air of their actual touch, from the apple-battle of 
book-forts to this day's love for writing them, one 
need scarcely wonder that Colonel Higginson says : 
" Yet as a matter of fact, 1 never had books enough, 
nor have I ever had to this day." 

The musical as well as the intellectual atmos- 
phere of the Higginson home deeply impressed this 
music-loving boy. Concerning it he writes many 





>: : ? 



F 



years afterwards: "My youngest sister was an 
excellent pianist — one of the first in this region to 
play Beethoven." Several memories of her and 
others, he adds, " brought back vividly the happi- 
ness with which, when sent to bed at eight o'clock, 
I used to leave the door of my little bedroom ajar 
in order that I might go to sleep to music. 1 still 
recall the enchantment with which I heard one 
moonlight summer night the fine old glee, ' To 
Greece we give our Shining Blades,' sung by 
Miss Davis, her brother (Admiral Davis), Miss 
Harriet Mills (afterwards his wife), and William 
Story, as a serenade under my sister's window; 
it made me feel, in Keats' phrase, * as if 1 was 
going to a tournament.' I now recall with pleasure 
that while my mother disapproved of all but 
sacred music on Sunday, she ruled that all good 
music was sacred. Greatly to my bliss I escaped 
almost all those rigors of the old New England 
theology which have darkened the lives of so many. 
We were expected to read the New Testament, 
but there was nothing enforced about the Old. 
Even Sunday brought no actual terrors. I have 
the sweetest image of my mother ready dressed 





for church — usually bearing a flower in her hand 
— waiting for my sisters' appearance." This 
pleasant experience in touch with religion was no 
doubt one reason for young Higginson's entering 
Harvard Divinity School in 1847. He began his 
clerical career with the First Religious Society at 
Newburyport, a church two hundred years old. 

That young Higginson was of attractive personal 
appearance from childhood comes from various 
sources. In fact his mother cautioned her son 
against making faces lest he should spoil his own, 




as she believed one of his boy friends had done. 
Of his rapid physical growth he himself writes: 
" I was six feet tall at fourteen." He adds of his 
shyness what it is not so easy to believe : " I had 
experienced all the agonies of bashfulness in the 
society of the other sex, though greatly attracted 
to it " ; and continues : " A word or two from my 
mother had in a single day corrected this." This 
mother gave him to understand that his companions 
of social successes were not his superiors in school 
or on the playground, and '' Why not cope with 
them elsewhere?" By a process unique he lost 
his diffidence in a single evening. Invited to a 
company and knowing what young ladies would 
be there, he put down on paper what he would 





say to each if he chanced to be near. '' It worked 
like a charm," he says, " and I heard next day that 
everybody was surprised at the transformation. 
It set me free." 

At thirteen years of age young Higginson be- 
came a " Child of the College," and we are assured 
that the entrance examination of those days was 
by no means the boy's play that it is sometimes 
asserted to have been. Of his own advent he 
writes: "It was a blissful moment when I at last 
found myself, one summer morning, standing on 
the steps of University Hall, looking about with a 
new sense of ownership on the trees my father 
planted. Never since in life have I had such a 
vivid sense of a career, an opportunity, a battle 
to be won." He was the youngest of the class 
of 1841, and was among the number who after- 
wards won distinction in different walks of life 




Bi\?cr^it/ 






As a Child of the Col- 
lege, young Higginson 
fulfilled to family and 
friends his promising 
preparations for student 
life. Writing of various 
instructors, he says of one, 
*'I need not say what it 
was to read French with 
Longfellow." He tells us 
his only really intimate 
friend in the class was 
Francis Edward Parker, some two years older 
than himself. Of this friend he says : " I fre- 
quently spent nights in his room, and we had 
few secrets from each other and were running 
neck-and-neck for the first place during the time 
of our greatest intimacy. My marks were often 
second in the class, sometimes equalling — oh, 
day of glory ! — those of my classmate, Francis 
Edward Parker." Charles C. Perkins, authority 
on Italian art and founder of art instruction in 
Boston, was Higginson's room-mate during the 




* * ** * ^ 




senior year. Of Levi Lincoln Thaxter he writes 
as one " who did more for my literary tastes than 
all other friends. He was an ardent student of 
literature, much under the influence of his cousin, 
Maria White, and of Lowell, her betrothed. 
Thaxter first led me to Emerson and to Hazlitt ; 
we were both lovers of Longfellow. Thaxter's 
modesty, reticence, and later fame of his wife, 
Celia, have obscured him to the world; but he 
was one of the most loyal and high-minded of 
men." In his ** Contemporaries " Colonel Hig- 
ginson gives interesting accounts of many of 



^m]^^ 



M|xi^ 






these gifted persons among" 
whom he has lived and 
moved as one of them. 

A little later on he 
came in touch with that 
brilliant circle of attractive 
young people known as 
**The Brothers and Sisters/' 
of which James Russell 
Lowell and Maria White were 
called the "King" and "Queen." 
The Whites of Watertown, their 
cousins, the Thaxters, the Storys from Cambridge, 
and Hales and Tuckermans from Boston, and Kings 
from Salem were members of this fascinating and 
gifted court life. George William Curtis, Mar- 
garet Fuller, and Charles Dana of Brook Farm — 
all famous afterwards — were also counted among 
the young man's friends. Thus richly enfolded 
within such home, college, and social influences, 
Thomas Wentworth Higginson was graduated 
from Harvard College when he was four months 
less than eighteen years of age. 





Colonel Higginson's " Ideals of 

Womanhood" at different ages are 

given in an attractive and original 

way in his essay on " The Greek 

Goddesses." 

Incidentally Colonel Higgin- 
son writes : " I owe indirectly 
to a single remark made by 
my mother all the opening of 
my eyes to the intellectual 
disadvantages of her sex. In 
1837 Mrs. Rufus King, a very 



GREEK 



"^ 




accomplished and highly edu- 
cated Cincinnati woman, 
came to reside in Cambridge. 
She was making some criticisms at our 
house upon the inequalities between the 
sexes. My mother exclaimed, in her ardent 
way, ' But only think, Mrs. King, what an 
education you have obtained!' *Yes,' was 
the reply, ' but how did I obtain it ? ' Then 
followed the pathetic story of her early 
struggles for knowledge. It sank into my 
heart at the age of fifteen or thereabouts." 
Colonel Higginson has never failed. ;. 
in loyalty to this impulse, nor fal- 
tered in service to earnest 
workers of the gentler sex. 



I GODDESSES 






1 ^>rE5TJA ^ \^E5TA 

' iiMi iiiffwfrfwiw^ii M i l 1 1 III ii i i M i iii iiiiii n 



HLjiiuiiiiiiiMin' 



WTT 




From his Cambridge study — for his house is 
a library, a wide world of books — his influence, 
kind and ever wise, is constantly felt among all 
book-makers and countless readers everywhere. 









©UToDOOK. 



Here it is interesting to note the pleasure ex- 
pressed by the Queen-Mother of Italy for the 
charm and perfection of the Colonel's latest 
translation of the Italian poet Petrarch. 

So full of attractive interest in efforts, service, 
— national and individual, — and various suc- 
cesses has been the life of Thomas Wentworth 
Higginson from his graduation at Harvard College 
in 1841 until to-day that the writer of this sketch 
must refer interested readers to his '' Collected 
Works." They contain very nearly everything 
worth knowing of people and events with which 
his distinguished position at different times has 
brought him in touch. 

Even the summers do not find Colonel Higgin- 
son idle, but truly an earnest worker close to 
nature's heart at Glimpsewood, a poet's nook 
hidden among the shrubbery and trees close to 
the shore of lovely Dublin Lake, New Hampshire. 
Here, where old Monadnock worships itself in 
many streams, with his talented wife and their 
only child, Margaret, life, all jn all, must seem to 
Thomas Wentworth Higginson one glad, sweet 
song. 




.nrisB^" 






'h2 W!I^ £^ws- llBm& 





/ifeniv^oi^ SHi* 






ey&' 



fe asarden one v^icZe hz^Yiajaet srirea^cU for iljee. 
dainiiesb rev^eJler of- tlje joyous eaoctlj I 

^^ io a,3iuUeTfh/d 




ENRY WADSWORTH, second son 
of the Honorable Stephen and Zilpah 
Wadsworth Longfellow, was born 
on February twenty-seventh, 
^eighteen hundred and seven, in 
the large old-fashioned house still 
standing on the corner of Fore and Hancock 
Streets, Portland, Maine. His parents were 
spending the winter with his father's sister 






O o o o 



e ^eryef the mem 
o o o o o ig sl^ea 




o o o o o 



QR t^y l^eski. 



The Gld^^W^adsw^di-HierngfeUew^ieuse 

:PORTIiAND, Mi^INE 





jduring the absence of her husband, Captain 
Sanuiel Stephenson, whom business called to the 
^^^ West Indies. The new baby was named for his 
^ mother's brother, a United States Navy lieutenant 
^^ of nineteen, who, servini^" before Tripoli under 
||, g Commodore Preble, preferred death to slavery, 
fLand perished in the blowin^i^ up of the tire-ship 
^ Intrepid, September fourth, eighteen hundred and 



^^ 



four 



When little Henry was less than a year old, Mr. 

? Longfellow removed his family to what is now 

: known as*' The Wadsworth-Longfellow Home" 

on Congress Street, left by will of the poet's 

(§)%/, stay af /je)me,my hfearf, and rest; 



§\ 





general Teleg "^adsv^oxtl) 





youngest sister, Mrs. Anne 
Longfellow Pierce, to the 
Maine Historical Society. 
By its historian, Nathan 
Goold, and other able mem- 
bers, this house has been^ 
made a world's shrine to the 
literary and historic name it 
bears. It was the tlrst brick 
house in Portland, and was builf 
by the poet's grandfather. Gen- 
eral Peleg Wadsworth, during the^ 
years of seventeen hundred and eighty- ^^ 
five and six. His daughter Zilpah, Henry's mother, gives 
this picture of her father: "Imagine to yourself a man 
of middle age, well proportioned, with a military air, 
and who carried himself so truly that many thought 
him tall. His dress, a bright scarlet coat, buff small- 
clothes and vest, full ruffled bosom, ruffles over the 
hands, white stockings, shoes with silver buckles, white 
cravat bow in front, hair well powdered and tied be- 
hind in a club, so called." And General Wadsworth 
was the grand man his daughter so describes. It 
was on the broad stone stoop of his Congress Street 
home — the grandest house in town, of its time — 
that Zilpah Wadsworth, at twenty years of age, prc- 

(q may hmldmore spienelie[ [jabifatie^ns, 





sented a banner from the young ladies 

of Portland to the first uniformed militia 

company in Maine; and it was here, on 

January first, eighteen hundred and four, 

that she became the bride of Stephen 

Longfellow IV. Soon after their marriage 

they began housekeeping elsewhere, but 

returned to this house within a year after the 

birth of Henry Wadsworth. 

In eighteen hundred and twenty-nine this 

Portland home was left by will to Mrs. Longfellow 

and her sister Lucia Wadsworth, who lived with 

her, and as " Aunt Lucia " was ever like a second 

mother to the Longfellow little folk. Here six of 

these were born, and from its doorway five of 

them went to their eternal rest. 

Long ago, in the sixteen hundreds — and be- 
fore — of old England, the Longfellow and 
Wadsworth families were both found in Yorkshire 
county. However, William, the American founder 
of the Longfellow family, was born in Hampshire 
county, in sixteen hundred and fifty-seven, and 
when twenty-one years old came over the sea to 
Newbury, Massachusetts, where he married Anne 
Sewall, sister of the first chief-justice of that state. 
This William has been described as "not so much 

Jutong^ Avas ilie goodman^s sermon^ 
^eij ih seemed not so to me ; 
tor he spake qf^th the heacuiifvL 

z_^ndsiilllthoiA^ht^ihee.. 




J^eHuildwg (^il^eJ^Jpip 




of a Puritan as some." He was followed by 
another William and four Stephens in descent to 
the birth of the poet's brother Stephen V. The 
first Stephen, born in Newbury, became a black- 
smith and married Abigail, daughter of the Rev- 
erend Edward Thompson. Their fifth child, 
Stephen II, a bright boy, born in seventeen hun- 
dred and twenty-three, was sent to Harvard Col- 
lege, where he took two degrees. After teaching 
a while at York, where he married Tabitha 
Bragdon, he was invited, through Parson Thomas 
Smith of Portland, Maine — then called Falmouth 
— to become schoolmaster of that town. Here he 
steadily gained so high a character that he was 
asked to fill many of its important offices. 
When the British, in seventeen hundred and 
seventy-five, burned his town home, he moved to 
Gorham, Maine. This Stephen was said to be " a 
man of piety, integrity, and honor," and ''his 
favorite reading was history and poetry." 

His oldest son, Stephen III, was born at Fal- 
mouth, in seventeen hundred and fifty, and married 
Patience Young, of York, in seventeen hundred and 
seventy-three. In time he became known as a judge. 
In seventeen hundred and eighty-seven he bought 



.V 



— ' Klvelonof we will laiineh 
essel as goodly^, ajid siTong 
andstajnehf 

iiered a ^^intry sea t 



weea 




V 



li=s. 






lije J(xonqfelh\^ Qorljaonliome 

his father's Gorham 
farm, where, two 
years before, the 
Longfellow love of 
the beautiful led him 
to set out many 
trees along the 
roadsides and all 
around the place, 
and which were al- 
ways called the 
Longfellow elms. 
For this and other 
ways unusual to his 
time, he showed 
**he was not like 
other men." 
We are told that there was a haunted wood on 
the Portland way to Gorham; then came the 
home-view, with the blacksmith's shop across the 
road where the oxen and horses were shod; and 
beyond was the *' singing brook" and its bridge. 
Under the home windows grew syringas and 
sweetbriars, and dark-red " low damask " roses 
bloomed in their time of coming. Judge Longfellow 



e green trees -y^l^isperecL iov? and inilcl y 
It Was a sound of Joy ! 
^ey vt?(2re yny pls^fm2Ajes'v)ljen a cJ^ilcl^ 
Cflnd rooked me in tl)eir dorms so ^^ild • 
fe\ ^tillt^ey looked at me and smiled^ 
Js if H^/Jere aiioy; t^- 




was said to be " a fine-looking gentleman with 
the bearing of the old school; an erect, portly 
figure, rather tall ; wearing almost to the close of 
his life the old-style dress." The Judge's daugh- 
ter Abigail, Mrs. Samuel Stephenson, was given the 
neighboring land east of this Gorham home ; and 
so it came about that with his mates and 
Stephenson cousins the young town-boy Henry 
had many days of delightful freedom. They 
played at farming, following the mowers at hay- 
time; going for the cows in the pennyroyal 
pasture at evening; picking wild strawberries; 
peeping into the dairy to see the cheese-presses, 
and butter making in the tall churns ; then watch- 
ing the great spinning-wheel and the spinner 
walking to and fro as she fed the spindle from 
the heap of carded wool. Then when autumn 
came there was fun, frolic, and work of corn-husk- 
ing. These were among the many vacation 
attractions which charmed a poet's childhood and 
made every thought of his grandfather a pleasant 
one. 
It was in this Gorham home that to Judge 
.ongfellow and his wife. Patience Young, 




you , as JC sat 

t];sre sinyin(^ 






was born on March twenty-third, seventeen hun- 
dred and seventy-six, their second son, Stephen IV, 
who afterwards became the father of Henry 
Wadsworth Longfellow, the poet. 

The Wadsworths were the descendants of seven 
Mayflower pilgrims — Elder William Brewster and 
his wife Mary, Love Brewster, William Mullins 
and wife, Priscilla Mullins, and John Alden. 
Knowing this adds to " The Courtship of Miles 
Standish " still another charm. However, Christo- 
pher came from England to Duxbury, Massachu- 
setts, about sixteen hundred and thirty-two ; and 
fourth in descent from him was Deacon Peleg 
Wadsworth, father of General Peleg Wadsworth 
of military fame, and maternal grandfather of the 
poet. General Wadsworth was born in seventeen 
hundred and forty-eight, and was graduated from 
Harvard College in seventeen hundred and sixty- 
nine. He then taught school at Plymouth, 
Massachusetts, and about three years later mar- 
ried Elizabeth Bartlett, daughter of Samuel Bartlett 
of that town. General Wadsworth took a stirring 
part in the Revolutionary War, during which he 
was captured, imprisoned, and escaped, and with 
his equally brave wife faced many other perils 




a^nd Ijefrei-te-cl bjocL dj^fed. in ijis zxinor^ 



-Jfyw 



fer_s 




within these uncertain times. What thrilling 
stories his cocked hat and canteen might tell of those 
times, if they could, to the visitor of to-day to the 
Wadsworth-Longfellow home at Portland. His 
army service was full of zeal and honor, and made 
him a major-general in Massachusetts. After the 
war General Wadsworth, then forty-one, bought 
at twelve and a half cents an acre seventy-eight 
hundred acres of public lands in what is now the 
town of Hiram, Maine. His deed dates March 
tenth, seventeen hundred and ninety. Five years 
later he built his house. January first, eighteen 
hundred and seven, he began housekeeping there, 
and ended his days at Wadsworth Hall. Much 
has been written of this home, from its attic — 
the happy hunting-ground of children — filled with 
old chests, loom, spinning-wheel, tin kitchens, etc., 
to the cellar under the whole house. A yoke of 
oxen with a load of vegetables could be driven 
one way into this great cellar, and after unloading 
into the bins, driven out another. The furnishings 
of Wadsworth Hall were such as might be ex- 
pected in a home built and lived in by a distin- 
guished family for over a century. The old barn 
— a boy's paradise — was one hundred feet long. 




io ! as i,e ivrmd 
to chpso^'h 9 Jriseilla 
v\?as standirgfiesidei;!??! 




The poet's " Life " tells us : " Sometimes vacation 
journeys were a long day's drive to Hiram, where 
grandfather Wadsworth had built himself a house." 
His grandchildren " looked with a kind of awe 
upon his upright form, the cocked hat and buckled 
shoes." As they sat in the breezy hall they never 
tired of hearing him tell the thrilling story of his 
capture by the British, his prison life in Fort 
George, at Castine, and his wonderful escape. 
There were also tales of his college life, and later 
stirring events to claim their wide-eyed attention. 
He was a man to attract the young in many ways. 
While a member of Congress, General Wadsworth 
wrote his life in fifteen letters to his children, then 
in his Portland home, and where a little 
^ook of them can now be seen. On July 
twentieth, eighteen hundred and 

twenty-five, his 
honored wife, 








In il^e. fzirro\^ed. land. 

"jSje toilsome ^:ndpaiieni oxett stand; 



]R.aJn in Summeir. 




" his comforter in hours of trial, the grace and 
ornament of his prosperous home," left him for- 
ever. He followed her November twelfth, eighteen 
hundred and twenty-nine, and sleeps but a few 
rods from the doorway of this old Hiram home. 
Perhaps no more beautiful tribute could be given 
his worth and influence than that appearing on his 
headstone : " He was a Patriot, a Philanthropist, 
and a Christian." The first-born of his eleven 
children, Alexander Scammel, died inside the 
American lines at Dorchester Heights; sailor 
Henry has already been named with honor. But 
Zilpah, his oldest daughter, most concerns the 
children's Longfellow, as she became his mother. 






J})en ^^}iii) nostrils ^/?idQ disiendedy 
J^xe^king Jrom ];is iron e])QjrL^ 
JhadunfoldirLg \A?ide l;is pinions^ 
lo tJjose stars ]je soared a^ain. 





r Bli23hd}r\^d^\i/or6h general Telecf^lA/adshlorth 








Not a day's ride from the Hiram home is the wind- 
ing Songo, the " dream " river of a poem Longfel- 
low wrote in eighteen hundred and seventy-five. 
* * * His father, Stephen Longfellow IV, was 
noted for his purity of character, gentlemanly 
bearing, fine spirits, cordial manners, and his 
scholarship. In seventeen hundred and ninety- 
eight he was graduated from Harvard College in 
the same class with the Reverend Doctor William 
Ellery Channing and Judge Joseph Story among 
others. Admitted to the Cumberland Bar in 
eighteen hundred and one, he soon made and kept 
a high position as a lawyer and statesman. In 
eighteen hundred and twenty-eight he received 



IJnd tie Ti^ssliaU he filled ^t|j wusm 






In ilje mirror ef lis iicle 
ICki^led il^iekei,s on eesejj side 
Jiang invejrtecL ^ * * * «« * 




^im>^ 



the LL.D. degree from Bowdoin College, of which 
he was trustee for many years. For the year of 
eighteen hundred and thirty-four he was president 
of the Maine Historical Society, and in eighteen 
hundred and forty-nine he left this world with an, 
undying record of "high integrity, public spirit, 
hospitality, and generosity." 

Mrs. Longfellow, the poet's mother, was beauti- 
ful. She had a slight but upright figure ; and 
although an invalid in later years, she always had 




cJei?: 



sireajn 



t 



1 ^^55^2 itifsonoy or iit^dre3nn ^^ 
1-=^^di2^ sloW %rou£f}) husl) a<nd hrake^ 
Ainks ■togeilier'JaKe amd iaKe# '^"^~^- 




iver 




^ retail ^^est 
^^% golden Ijair^ 

lis lofij e}j2iir, 
j)rums on tlje 
iaJjle M^aJ) ])is 




a sweet and expressive face. In her youth she de- 
lighted in dancing and social gaiety, and was ever 
fond of poetry and music. She loved nature in 
all its ways, and had no fear of sitting by a 
window during a thunder-storm to enjoy *'the 
excitement of its splendors." Always cheerful, 
with a gentle, quiet strength, and full of tender, 
simple piety, she loved church, sermon, and hymn. 
She read her Bible, and made her religion fair by 
its fairest gifts. A true friend was she, a kind 
neighbor, good to the poor, and a devoted mother 



oLor ivPo edonej 

■tljere in i\)e l;all 7 
X^ spread ■tl;e tafcle 

xound 2md smallj 




*■ ^U il^inffs must cl)eo^e 

Jjo ^omei])iingf ney^^ io somet}jirff strafe; 





to her children. She was their confidant, sharing 
their little secrets, joys, and troubles, and was 
their comforter, yet patient corrector of their 
faults. With such a mother and father, and so 
many of their like before them, all making for 
beautiful family influence in this attractive Wads- 
worth- Longfellow home, and among this charming 
circle of brothers and sisters and friends, Henry 

^gj[|;e cT/iid should Cfro^ 
^_ into a 7na"n,^_ 




J^ 



Tearless 



^^enile h^^^^iilj soft 2aidL silken locks , 
^dxezai^hffyf^^iti) (iJuej and tender eyes^ 

Wadsworth Longfellow breathed in the spirit 
which caused his genius to bud and flower for all 
the world. 

Baby Henry's first visitor must have been good 
Doctor Shirley Erving, the family physician ; for 
framed and hanging on the wall of the Wadsworth- 
Longfellow home is now seen this record: "1807 
Feb. for attending Mrs. Longfellow ^?.00" 

The young mother often took her children to 
her father's country home forty miles away. She 
was there with her little ones when Henry was 
eight months old, as it is from Hiram she writes 
of them : 

"You would be delighted with my little Stephen. 
He is an engaging little fellow. I think you would 
like my little Henry W. He is an active rogue, 
i ^ideii:^ and wishes for nothing so much as singing and 
dancing. He would be very happy to have you 
raise him up to see the balls on the mirror." 

" The Castle-Builder," which Longfellow wrote 
in eighteen hundred and forty-eight, gives a pic- 
ture of the next two years of his baby life. 

A fearless rider on his father's knee, 
An eager Hstener unto stories told, 



^^ I j4 castle -jbuiJder,n?it]; 
J^ndto^^ers 









# # # # # # G^iMj/ocd 

* At the Round Table of the nursery, 

Of heroes and adventures manifold. 

There will be other towers for thee to build ; 

There will be other steeds for thee to ride ; 
There will be other legends, and all tilled 

With greater marvels and more glorified. 

In a small, brick schoolhouse on Spring Street, 
a Mrs. Fellows taught her little flock, and here it 
was that, with his brother Stephen of five, our 
Henry of three first went to school. It is said that 
*' Ma'am Fellows," as she was called, " taught him 
his letters and respect for his elders, if nothing 
more." He remembered being sometimes carried 
here to school on horseback, in front of a colored 
man who worked for his father. 

When five years old Henry was sent for one 
week to the public school in Love Lane — now 
Centre Street — near his home. Here he found 
the boys rather rough and the master perhaps the 
same — who accused him of telling a lie, the child 
coming home one day with his cheeks flushed and 
his little heart burning with anger. Therefore he 
was sent to a Mr. Wrighf s school, which was 
afterwards kept by Mr. N. H. Carter. 

The eighteen hundred and twelve war with 
England brings our young hero of five to the 




% 



a^QZZX 



jEelloWs *' 









Jijje ze&-ficf^i fsr a\%y," 




(j<? 



s 




Enierprise aoid JSoxer 



X 



front, as is told in his aunt's letter dated May 
sixth of that year. She writes of him : '' Our 
little Henry is ready to march ; he had his tin gun 
prepared and his head powdered a week ago." In 
eighteen hundred and thirteen, at six, he made a 
small and eager witness of events connected with 
the famous sea-fight between the Enterprise and 
the "Boxer, when both captains were killed, and 
afterwards buried side by side in the Eastern ceme- 
tery. The British ship, however, was captured 
and brought into Portland harbor. How well he 









remembered it all is told in the following lines 
from his poem " My Lost Youth " : 

I remember the sea-fight far away, 
How it thundered o'er the tide ! 
And the dead captains, as they lay 
In their graves, o'erlooking the bay, 
Where they in battle died. 

And of all his verses these are the most cherished 
by those who live *' in the city by the sea." 
Who of them all could resist such endearing 
expression as : 

Often I think of the beautiful town 

That is seated by the sea ; 
Often in thought go up and down 
The pleasant streets of that dear old town. 

And my youth comes back to me. 



its illusions, aspiiaiioTzs^Jreams I 
ook of 'Beqimdr^s^^ory \Mljoub End, 
i^eJj 77iai(i a J;er<?i«e ^ and 





—JMjDrzbvx'i j!^aluirAinu9 




\ 






^M 



77 7.rr/i^ This poem was written March, eighteen hundred 

and fifty-five, and noted in the poet's journal thus : 
" At night as I lie in bed, a poem comes into my 



^ ' X 

'V.'^' 






/ 



^//^/y mind; a memory of Portland, my native town, 

' ^^''/■'i'f- :l the city by the sea." The next day he added: 

'// {' f'l:i:^ "Wrote the poem ; and am rather pleased with it 



',11 

I 










and with bringing in of the old Lapland song" 
(at the end of every verse) — 

** * A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.' " 

When Mr. Carter, in eighteen hundred and 
thirteen, took charge of the Portland Academy, 
he was followed there by young Henry who, at 
six, no doubt rejoiced in bringing home one day 
this billet : " Master Henry Longfellow is one of 
the best boys we have in school. He spells and 
reads very well. He also can multiply numbers. 
His conduct last quarter was correct and amiable. 
June 30, 181?." 

Master Henry's name next appears in a letter 
dated January thirteenth, eighteen hundred and 
fourteen, from his mother to his father at Boston, 
to whom is sent this message : " Oh, tell papa I 
am writing at school — a, b, c ; and send my love 
to him, and I hope he will bring me a drum." 

jDovJnwSsord irams j/5rom l;ea\?en ^ ^ 

irod^ on tlje iijresljold 

'of el)ildhoocl 



7f 






J^e C^iZarew. of t}^eJ!lpTr<^'sJ3itppe 






And this message was followed by the boy's first n. 
letter ; he *' who was to write so many " wrote to \ 
his father : 

Portland, Jan. — 1814. 

Dear Papa, 

Ann wants a little Bible like little Betsey's. 
Will you please buy her one, if you can find any 
in Boston ? I have been to school all the week, 
and got only seven marks. I shall have a billet 
on Monday. I wish you would buy me a drum. 

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 



NX 



/ 



Young Henry honestly tells of the "marks" 
against himself, but seems sure of the Monday's 
billet. However, both his message and his letter 
find this boy of seven placing love to his father 
and a sister's pleasure in Ann's Bible before his 
own in the drum. This first letter was answered 
bv his father as follows : 

" I have found a pretty drum with an 
eagle painted on it, but the man asks two 
dollars for it ; and they do not let any ves- 
sels go from Portland to Boston now. But 
if I can . . . send it I shall buy it. And 
if I cannot, I shall buy something else 
which will please you as well. I am 

—7^ inasi;Er,tJ;e miller^ stands 
Jinifeedsjne\)j\^ Ijzs ^ajids. — f 

Jheffi ntbnill 



>^ 



P 




glad to hear that you 
have been a good 
boy at school and 





you are likely to get 

a billet. You must 

save all your billets 

until I get home. If 

I can get time I shall 

write you and Stephen 

another letter and tell 

you about the State" 

House, and the theatre, and other things that are 

in Boston." What a happy boy Henry must 

have been 1 Not only the promised drum, or 

something as good was coming, but also '* another 

letter" telling of so many pleasant things. 

President Jefferson's embargo, or order, not 
allowing merchant-ships to leave port caused his 

father's doubt about send- 
ing the drum. The State 
House and theatre letter of 
course was eagerly watched 
for by these boys, 
as theatres were not 
then to be seen in 
WM^TW^ l\\ ^^^& their city. In his 



■r 




VJ 



it rains , and iije \^in^is rie\7ei^ ^ ^ 



iry 



\ 



■\ ^ 



^ \ w -^ \ 



Hkkry W. Lo3rcpBi:.i.OMr. 



"Old Portland Pa- 
pers" Nathan Goold 
says : " Then a boy 
had a year to look for- 
ward to once going 
to a circus, and a quarter to spend on Fourth of July. 
It made the heart of the average boy glad, and 
many girls, too." The circus and menagerie were 
eagerly attended. "Grand and lofty tumbling" 
and much fine riding were done over and over again 
for his sisters to see at home. The steed was a 
large wooden rocking-horse, and the make-believe 
circus-tent was the back porch, over which grew the 
poet's " Rainy Day" vine. On such a day it must 
have been that too much force in leaping over its 
head brought the horse with a broken neck over 
with his master. Alas for the horse I — but the poet 
was spared us. Yet with all his fun and frolic, even 
as a boy, Longfellow disliked loud noises, and it is 
whispered that he coaxed the maid one Fourth of 
July to put cotton in his ears, although he with 
strong feeling denied being afraid. Later in life he 
had the motto l^on clamor, sed amor — not noise, 
but love — put on one of his book-plates. 

i>je -rja>^£ w^^ ma^ friends 



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^llXkno^ 




-bjfe secret places 



It was about this time his mother wrote: 
" Henry is reading Gay's * Fables/ He is quite in- 
dignant over ' The Hare with Many Friends,' but 
■^ now consoles himself with saying he doesn't 
believe it is true." 

This spring of eighteen hundred and fourteen 

Master Henry Longfellow, at seven, is reported 

as having " gone half through his Latin grammar " 

I and " standing above several boys twice as old as 

he is.' 

From Mrs. Longfellow's letters, dating eighteen 
hundred and seventeen, we find the lad did not 
escape the accidents usual to all boys, for his mother 
writes : " Henry has lamed his elbow coming out 
of school, and had his arm in a sling." Yet never 
minding it, " he went to dancing-school Saturday 
afternoon, but excused himself from meeting on 
Sunday; Monday attended at the Academy ex- 
amination; Tuesday attended the (military) 
I Review. Wednesday afternoon the boys went to 
school to contend for the prize in reading. 
Henry was in high spirits. He ' did not know 
as he should get it, but wanted to try, and have 
it over.' " It was at this time, when he was ten, 
that the new master, Mr. Cushman, certifies that 



l/isions afc^ilAJjood l^i^, oij ^ st^i 
\Je v\?ere so sv)eei auacl Vi7ila ; 



ou art JiQinQxe. a. eljila I 



^axruit^enesis ir^ljeige and tree; 

jrttvv?i;ai doors are fc'encl^^ees^ 

2ll^pl}^i J;earts are il)aa^l)H oj^ me . 

Henry *' has during the week distinguished him- 
self by his good deportment, — Monday morning's 
lessons and occasional levity excepted." Later he 
was reported as *' very ambitious to do well " ; 
and once was added, with some mystery, that he 
" is wise enough to listen to the advice of his best 
friends." " Remarkably solicitous always to do 
right" wrote of him his no less remarkable 
mother, who went out to meet her children on 
their return from school, that she might know 
the character of their associates. 

That the boy was sensitive and easily impressed 
is shown by this record : "His elder brother was 
very fond of a gun, and many were the excursions 
to near woods and shores " ; however, " one day 
Henry came home with his eyes full of tears, and 
so grieved at heart because he had shot a robin, 
that he never tried again." Yet fishing, we are 
told, did not trouble him so much. 

He was fond of all boys' games — the winter 
brought the fun of snow-balling, skating, and 
coasting; in summer, ball, kite-flying, swimming, 



cg^ 



^^ 



'//■// 



If^"' 





e^ri^k Woods arefres^ and. fair. 
Jind. v^ii|;j^ t^ai is ahnost j^ain 

and he loved to 
bathe in a little 
creek on the bor- 
der of Deering's 
Oaks; and there 
under the trees 
would lie and 
read. How much 
he enjoyed the 
trees is well told 
in his home- 
song-, "My Lost 
Youth." At this 
age Henry Long- 
fellow was re- 
membered as "a 
very handsome boy, with brown hair, rosy cheeks, 
and blue eyes full of expression; it seemed as 
though you could look down into them as into a 
clear spring." He was " retiring, yet there was a 
frankness about him that won you at once." He 
was bright, active, eager; at times impatient, 
quick-tempered, but as soon pleased; warm- 
hearted and affectionate. He was orderly, neat, 
prompt; a worker always, and in all he under- 
took, even in play, v^as full of ardor. 




J^ Ijesrb cjoes Lack 

-io ^AJand.Q-r tl;ere , 

jAmor^ "fclje dreams of 

i])e d^s iljai Vere^ 

l^ind -my lost jouil; ajraf n. 



3{o\^\A)oyiieyr{ijl ! Jjje Hcjijt Vpan ^eirjaee 

There was mu- 
sic in the home, 
where, in their 
parlor later on, 
his sister's piano 
replaced the spin- 
et of his mother's 
youth. In this 
rare old picture- 
room, just to 
the left of the 
hall-entrance, 
where so many 
of worth and 
fame had wel- 
come, young 

Henry "lent his voice and the training of the 
singing-school" to such songs as "Bonnie Doon," 
" The Last Rose of Summer," and " Oft in the 
Stilly Night." There " the lessons of the dancing- 
class were also repeated," to the tunes of "Money 
Musk," "The Haymakers," or "Fisher's Hornpipe." 

Much is quoted from the poet's "Life" by his 
youngest brother, the Reverend Samuel Longfellow, 





QleainiTicj in a eJ^ of li^^iy 
^ncL an eacfer^ up^Od^rd look} ^ 






who gives not in all its pages a more attractive 
picture than of the evenings in the family sitting- 
room, which also served as the father's study. 
" In the evenings there were lessons to be learned, 
I and the children opened their satchels and gathered 
with their books and slates around the table in 
the family sitting-room " — across the hall from 
the parlor. *' The silence would be broken for a 
moment by the long, mysterious blast of a horn, 
telling the arrival in town of the evening mail; 

then the rattle of its pass- 
ing wheels, and silence 




us 



j^i];e/: 



ire 






-jftCL^ristmas Gsvol 



^gain, save the singing of the wood fire." In the 
charm of this old home-life was a wise measure of 
work and play, and so is added : " Studies over, 
there would be games till bedtime." If these 
became too noisy " for the quiet needed for the 
father's law-papers," then there was flight — per- 
haps, in winter, to the kitchen, where hung the 
crane over the coals in the broad old fire-place, 
upon whose iron back a fish forever baked in 
effigy. When bedtime came " it was hard to leave 
the warm fire to go up into the unwarmed bed- 
rooms." Their beds, no doubt, were made inviting 
by the quaint, long-handled brass warming-pans, 
still hanging here and there about the old home ; 
but oh ! for the cold of those Maine-winter morn- 
ings, as is added : " Still harder next morning to 
get up out of the com- 
fortable feather beds 
and break the ice in 
the pitchers, for wash- 
ing." The boys' room 






N ■» S 










was a western upper chamber, where now can be 
seen their little trundle-bed with its daintily 
stitched linen, and a desk among other objects 
of interest. The view from the windows is 
thus described : " In summer it was pleasant to 
look out from the upper windows, over the Cove 
and the farms and woodlands towards Mt. Wash- 
ington full in view on the western horizon." In 
"the damp evenings of early spring" the poet 
recalls that they were awakened by "the loud 
crowing of cocks and the cooing of pigeons on 
the roofs of barns." A flight to the east-room 
windows then gave him an unbroken vista of the 








bay, its islands, forts, and the light-house on Cape 
Elizabeth. Later in life he gave of them these 
pen-pictures : 

The rocky ledge runs far into the sea, 

And on its outer point, some miles away. 
The Lighthouse lifts its massive masonry, 
A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day. 

The Lighthouse. 

I can see the shadowy lines of its trees, 

And catch, in sudden gleams, 
The sheen of the far -surrounding seas. 
And islands that were the Hesperides 

Of all my boyish dreams. 

I remember the black wharves and the slips. 

And the sea-tides tossing free ; 

And Spanish sailors with bearded lips. 

And the beauty and mystery of the ships, 

And the magic of the sea. 

My Lost Youth, 

(9 Weatljereoek en ti;e -^illd^e spire p 
lAati; yoar cjolion feathers aji on fire ^ 

leE -me, v)ljai can you see from ^cur perel^ 
jJlho'Je i}jere ovfer ilje io\Jex of ilje el/urel) f 




S)evere7id. JLchabod. .-JViehoIs 






r 




We are told there were no 
Sunday-schools at this time, 
but there was "going to meet- 
ing " — as the church-going 
was called — twice a day, and 
sickness was the only excuse 
for absence. The family pew 
was in the Old First Parish 
meeting-house, and the Rev- 
erend Ichabod Nichols, then its minister, was a 
pleasant man of great mental and moral power. 
In a letter dated December twenty-six, eighteen 
hundred and twenty-four, his mother writes: 
" Mr. Nichols was her^ the other day. He said 
he was much pleased with your lines on the * Old 
Parish Church,' though he thought you had not 
done much to promote the erection of the new 
one." Henry wrote this poem March, eighteen 
hundred and twenty-four, when he was seventeen. 
Yet this old meeting-house in winter time was 
cold, and Henry's love for his mother finds him 
walking by her side, carrying the little foot-stove 
of coals, to make more pleasing the morning 
sermon. "But in summer he carried flowers, — 
a bunch of pinks, or apple blossoms 
from the great trees in the garden." 

^r Idil^ers iem-plel deril^yfirm 

Jiipeaee times Jjoly t\A)il^}ji; f^^lls : 

l/ebljesOenh/ligljijrovi/s pure 3ni\^dorm 



JTfTOvnd tlj^ VeneraiJe W^lis : 



^7id \?ittj eljilcUike^ credulous ey-ffeo-iion j (^^ 
weieiold i^eir -bemdeir huds expand: W^ 

On Sunday afternoons this mother " gathered her 
children around her to read in turn from the great 
family Bible, and to look over and talk over its 
crude engravings. On Sunday evenings there was 
always the singing of hymns." From his earliest 
years the poet was a book-lover. His father's 
library gave him Shakespeare, Milton, Goldsmith, 
Plutarch's "Lives," Hume's and Robertson's his- 
tories among other books. All these he read, 
and at times was allowed to go to Mr. Johnson's 
book-store to look over the new books from Bos- 
ton, and here he would listen to the book talk of 
his elders. He could also go to the shelves of the 
Portland Library. Of his favorite reading he him- 
self writes : " Every reader has his first book. To 
me, this first book was the 'Sketch-Book' of 
Washington Irving. I was a school-boy when it 
was published, and read each succeeding number 
with ever increasing wonder and delight, spell- 
bound by its pleasant humor, . . . nay, even by its 
gray-brown covers, the shaded letters of its title, 
and the fair, clear type. . . . Yet still the charm of 
the 'Sketch-Book' remains unbroken ; the old fas- 
cination remains about it ; and whenever I open 
its pages I open that mysterious door which leads 
back into the haunted chambers of youth. 

hmljleins of our o-^ncfce.zAi re3urreefi<m.^, 




aaic 



Jjetter hnd 



Jihu^e 



^^ 




^Ije IS a rmad of earkhss^raee.^ 
^eTiile Ttijonrij andj^or injzsA. 

It is said that " Robinson Crusoe " and the 
*' Arabian Nights" were read by the children to- 
gether, and that Henry took great delight in 
"Don Quixote" and "Ossian," and would go 
about the house declaiming "their windy and 
misty utterances." 

" In the Portland Academy the boys and girls 
were duly placed apart." Their desks faced 
either side of the aisle that ran from the door to the 
teacher s desk. And it seems there were lessons 
learned other than grammar and arithmetic — bits 
of romance not taken to the teacher for criticism ; 
and rumor says the shy and ardent boys cut peep- 
holes in their desk-lids to be secretly used when 
putting away slates or taking out writing-books 
— which the doing in this way took a long time. 
His brother writes : " The school-year was divided 
into quarters, with a week's vacation at the end 
of each, which was extended perhaps in summer 
to a fortnight." And then these budding romances 
of the Academy were taken to the leafy glades of 
Deering's Woods "which our school-boy fre- 
quented," says his brother, " not only with his boy 
companions, but with the pretty maidens, his 

JmA. Ije J iljecfood mdoiis Eijidi. and sU^^is j 
Xo yJ^ouL all lyearis 

tijezv homaqe p2(id ^ , 

Jio xninstrel HBeds 



Coplzss ds ^Ja3vi(p^ 



DON QUIXOTE 




/Standing v?ii]; reluet^oni feei^ 

M/ere the irook. and ri'Per meei^ 

sister's friends, 
when April winds 
stirred the bloom 
of rosy-white May- 
flowers under their 
blanket of autumn 
leaves, — like the 
innocent flames 
that hid their ten- 
der glow under the 
schoolboy's jacket." 
Among its oaks 
it appears nature 
had placed a few 
beech trees — *'her 
ready tablets for the 
schoolboy's stylus, 
the pen-knife, in 

its practice of the alphabet." Of these del 
days the poet writes in " My Lost Youth " : 

I remember the gleams and glooms that dart 

Across the school -boy's brain ; 
The song and the silence in the heart, 
That in part are prophecies, and in part 
Are longings wild and vain. 

yVomanLood and eljucihooa fleei I 

AMKe tlje s^ellof some sv^eet tune^ 
J^ornum rises inio noon. 
M^ alleles onv)ajrcl inio Time, 

_J^aide«7icocL 



:i&jirzS ^=JbO£h3=, 






%M 



I can see the breezy dome of groves, 

The shadows of Deering's Woods ; 
And the friendships old and the early loves 
Come back with a Sabbath sound, as of doves 

In quiet neighborhoods. 

Not far away from the Hiram home of his grand- 
father Wads worth is the town of Fryeburg, in which 
lies one of the many small lakes of Maine- This 
one is called Lovewell's, or Lovell's, Pond, and was 
made famous in history by '* Lovewell's Fight" 
with the Indians there. This story had deeply 
impressed young Henry, and with the result 

that on November seventeenth, eighteen 



hundred and twenty, there appeared in the 
corner of the "Portland Gazette" a poem entitled 
*'The Battle of Lovell's Pond," of which some 
lines are here given. 

The war-whoop is still, and the savages' yell 

Has sunk into silence along the wild dell ; 

The din of the battle, the tumult is o'er. 

And the war-clarion's voice is now heard no more. 

These were the first known printed verses of 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, written by him 
when he was thirteen years of age. Years after- 
wards he recalled "the trembling and misgiving 
of heart " with which he ran down to Mr. Shirley's 
printing office and cautiously slipped his written 
poem into the letter-box. The evening before the 
paper came out he went again, and shivering in 
the November air, cast many a glance at the 
windows as they trembled with the jar of the ink 
balls and the press, afraid to go in. No one but 
his sister knew his secret, and she shared his 
excitement in the coming of the next morning's 
paper. Imagine their impatience watching the 
slow unfolding of the damp sheet in their father's 
hands, and the rising steam as he held it before 
the fire to dry. Slowly he read it and said nothing 
— of the verses; and they kept their secret. 

Qolijecllis t^e norty Vv^inA 

and 'rude is il)e ilasi 
J[^at sv^eeps like a Lz^rrieaiie 






■■^'-«/^ 



--^y 



Id^ll^ \ 




When they did get that paper, to their great joy 
they found the poem was in it. The boy's delight 
was beyond words to express. Time and time 
again he read it, and each time with more pleasure. 
That evening he went to the home of his father's 
friend, Judge Mellen, whose son Frederic was his 
own mate. Among those around the fireside 
circle the talk turned on poetry. The Judge, 
taking up the morning's " Gazette," said : " Did 
you see the poem in to-day's paper ? Very stiff, 
remarkably stiff; moreover, it is all borrowed, 
every word of it." It is recorded that " the boy's 
heart shrunk within him, and he would have 
gladly sunk through the floor." He went home 
soon after, not betraying himself; but tears, 
bitter tears, dampened his pillow that night. Yet 
he survived this first unpleasant encounter with 
the critic, which he well describes as follows : 

There are things of which I may not speak ; 

There are dreams that cannot die ; 

There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak, 

And bring a pallor into the cheek, 

And a mist before the eye. 

My Lost Youth 

In eighteen hundred and twenty-one this school- 
boy of fourteen, with his brother, passed the 



'e chrav? the ozitlinQs of 

weiircZ figures east 

oftijejasi. 



JJ^e_NeM? JtinolancL -LYaoecIi.es 




entrance examinations for Bowdoin College, but 
they pursued their first year's study at home. 
In the autumn of eighteen hundred and twenty- 
two Henry Longfellow and his brother Stephen 
went to Bowdoin College as sophomores, and 
together took a room at the Reverend Mr. 
Titcomb's in Brunswick village. Students' rooms ^y ^ 
of that time were cheerless enough, as carpets j) 
were unknown to them, and our boys had added "^ 
only " some window-curtains and a set of card- 
racks painted by their sister," which, it seems, 
failed to keep them warm through the bitter 
northern winter — not even with the help of their 
wood-fire in the open fire-place. Of this trying 
time an anxious, loving mother writes : *' 1 am 

I 

lljea^r ih in the ovenjTW/ ^eax , 






1 



lu^i 



en-wd^n 



Hi(ij 



ears, me 




u 



N^ 



lo il/e svi?eeies^ '^ ^^ sheers j 
M> "tLe hesh of all inzisieiacina ^ 

sorry to find that your room is cold. I fear learn- 
ing will not flourish, nor your ideas properly 
expand in a frosty atmosphere; and 1 fear the 
muses will not visit you, and that I shall have 
no poetic eflfusion presented on New Year's Day." 
Whatever the boy may have suffered from the 
cold, his classmates found him " cheerful, genial, 
social, and agreeable." Yet lively as he was, it 
seems that his tastes never found outlet in college 
escapades or mischief. With his books and chosen 
companions, rambles in the pines along the river 
banks, family letters — especially those to and 
from his father, then member of Congress at 
Washington — well filled the college days. These 
family letters give much of interest in the young 
man's life at this time. In one of the first he 
modestly differs from " perhaps the most learned 
man in England " in writing to his mother of 
Dr. Johnson's criticism on the poet Thomas Gray. 
A later letter dated November ninth, eighteen 
hundred and twenty-three, finds him deeply inter- 
ested in Heckewelder's book on Indians, and being 
impressed with its truth, he writes of the red men : 
**They have been most barbarously maltreated by 
the whites, both in word and deed." The part 

M) ihe lo^e of olclJ\foio2n.z5. 

ZBrovicjljt i^e Tuoonl^ljh^ sidirhcj^^Jirelui^t^ 



,3ii2M)a,iha, 



^.xkcrLdsoxnesb cfall -tie y?oimi€'^:L. 

taken by young Longfellow and a classmate in the 
junior exhibition the following December was a 
dialogue between a North American hidian and 
a European. Mr. Bradbury says: "He had the 
character of King Philip, and I of Miles Standish." 
Without doubt these early thoughts on the in- 
justice to the Indian were the seedling which grew 
to the volume of wonder-writing found later in 
the song of " Hiawatha." It is the poesy of Indian 
tradition and legendary lore. 

From his letters of that time we find that Henry 
Longfellow at fifteen thought '' Locke on the 
Human Understanding" "neither remarkably hard 
nor uninteresting," and that he wished he might 
be in Washington where it was warm, for he 
writes : " Winter has commenced pretty violently 
with us," — and as walking was not good, he 
adds : " I have marked out an image on my closet 
door about my own size. I strip off" my coat, 
and considering this image in defence, make my 
motions as if in actual combat; and I have become 
quite skilful as a pugilist." At this time too he 
is missing the good things he had to eat at home. 
" More from necessity than inclination 1 
have become as spare 
Daniel was when he 

In t^ecflory of i^e 
STo ii)e Islands of ilje 
JTo ■Qjellsmd.ofi^e Ji< 







J-Lou ari iijedxis ^j^aiT amoiwf ihefairesh ^ 



Babylon on pulse." Then follows his interest in 
the fifth number of the "Sketch Book," and he 
hopes to have the pleasure of reading Irving's new 
novel, and also " The Pilot," by the author of 

The Spy." Perhaps more to follow his father's 
interests in Congressional proceedings, the boy at 
this time takes Carter's paper, " The New York 
Statesman," as his own love of politics was ever 
a mild one. 

During March eighteen hundred and twenty- 
four the young man, at sixteen, made his first 
visit to Boston, and in letters describes with 
enthusiasm the State House, Charlestown, Navy 
Yard, Athenaeum, and a private ball given by Miss 
Emily Marshall — the city belle of her time. He 
danced with the graceful daughter of the Russian 
consul, and ends his description of theatre-going 
with, "so much for the Shakespeare jubilee." Yet 
March finds him again at Brunswick, reading 
Horace, attending lectures, and from time to time 
throughout his entire college life dipping his poeti- 
cal pen into ink; and the verses written were printed 
now and then in various papers of the day. What- 
ever their value, he later approved his father's gentle, 
tactful warning during that period of hasty printing. 



K^ flov^er- de-lvee ^hloom Qn^anileb ihe Tivd 
^ Jxinc/er io Jdss -tlj-^ feei I 
W flower ef sonq^ hloom.. on^ and mzke Joire^i 
Ti;e -vPorld. more /air anct sw^eet 



er 



'er 




.oweT-de -1 



^Lee 



Kjanjrom. tlje asljes in our^earis onee more. 
jB/e-rose of^ouik restore ? 

Henry Longfellow had now reached the age 
when the student must soon face the serious 
question : " What are you going to do when you 
leave college ? " In kindly pleasant letters be- 
tween his wise father and himself there is some 
interesting reading on this subject. The son feels 
that the life-callings of a clergyman, a doctor, or a 
lawyer are not much to his liking; he writes, "1 
cannot make a lawyer of any eminence, because I 
have not a talent for argument; I am not good 
enough for a minister, — and as to physic, I utterly 
and absolutely detest it." In another letter he 
adds : "Whatever I do study ought to be engaged 
in with all my soul, — for I will be eminent in 
something." And later on he confesses : " The 
fact is I have a most voracious appetite for knowl- 
edge." In truth, he longed for the literary life he 
afterwards lived, and the eminence he so brilliantly 
won in it then appeared to his young eyes as a 
prophetic vision. With this in mind, December, 
eighteen hundred and twenty-four, he writes his 
father that he wishes to spend one year at Cam- 
bridge *' studying the best authors in polite litera- 
ture," and also adding to his knowledge of Italian 
and French. Concerning Cambridge his father 



ruDT -w^ili L >?ainly c^uestion 
Ji/ose pag'es of ilje i^siie iook M^i^ielj IjoicL 




:pj. 



ing(( 



e^iesis 



i:S>Kvv>f Vf. ^^^-yy^c^^tSlXyvo 



AD.mf 



answered : " I have always thought it might be 
beneficial; if my health should not be impaired 
and my finances should allow, I should be very 
happy to gratify you." 

The first handsome book owned by Henry 
Longfellow was a fine copy of Chatterton's works, 
and it is interesting to know that he earned with 
his pen at this time the fourteen dollars he paid 
for it. His Commencement Ode was originally 
written on Chatterton, but by his father's advice 
the subject was changed to "Our Native Writers." 

This brilliant Bowdoin class of 182? was one of 
great ambitions and intense struggle for rank in 
scholarship. Among such names as Hawthorne, 
Pierce, Cheever, Bradbury, Abbott, and others, 
Longfellow's "stood justly among the first." 

About this time Madame Bowdoin gave a 
memorial fund to Bowdoin College, towards 
founding a chair of modern languages ; and as 
a fine translation from an Ode of Horace made 
by Longfellow appealed to those in authority, his 
'\name was warmly presented to fill it. His father 
returned to Portland with this news and the added 
suggestion that the young man should visit Europe 
to further fit himself for the position. Such an 



v^e Ija-^efeei) io seale and elimh 

V? d^prees^iy move and, 2tiore y 

^oud^ 5U2t2:w.Hs of OUT iiine . 

Jjje Jliadiiei' of uaiub Jtiwicshi. 



zTie. 




•rase. 



'M.6. U Si 



opening to the longed-for literary life gave the 
young graduate unbounded delight. However, 
this time of the year being unfavorable for sailing- 
packets, Longfellow spent the autumn and winter 
in reading Blackstone in his father's office, and in 
the " little room " off from it many a verse was 
scribbled and some papers written for various 
periodicals — more for pleasure perhaps than profit. 
All this with family and social duties filled the 
time until late April, when he left home for New 
York, whence he was to sail for France. A 
European trip in those days was a rare event for 
a young man of nineteen, and his was to be a 
three years' pilgrimage in search of knowledge. The 
lad was followed by the blessings of his mother, 
well beloved, and by the counsels of a father 
kindly wise. They had news from him at Boston, 
where he heard Dr. Channing preach and dined 
with Professor Ticknor, who gave him letters to 
Southey, Washington Irving, and others abroad. 

In Philadelphia he was so impressed with the 
attractive appearance of the Pennsylvania Hospital 
that many years after he made it the scene of the 
last meeting between Gabriel and Evangeline. In 
this beautiful poem of exquisite pathos " the poet 

jlie \jeicjljis iyoreai man reael;ea d^nd, liepi 

vVere nob atiainei }^ sudcleiij^liffjji^ 
Jojfuh 'tlje^, vv^J;ile -b^jo^ir eoitLpdonions alepi ^ 
V\/ere -boilsiWf lip^^?arci in ilje nigiji . 

±}j& Xt adder tr^ p2d.nb jJkmus-hiixs. 



<d SM] 



3iack5i«TtG 






i^fs IS t^efirest ]prime\^al}lDub WJ;ere 

has enshrined the 
most holy of his 
musical utter- 
ances." 

The story of a 
young couple of 
Acadia was told 
to the Reverend 
H. L. Conelley by 
a French Canadian 
member of his 
parish. Thinking 
it to be a fine sub- 
ject for romance, 
Dr. Conelley told 
it to Nathaniel 
Hawthorne, who 
did not seem to 
care for its use. One day when they were both 
dining with Longfellow Dr. Conelley again told the 
story and added his wonder that it did not attract 
Hawthorne's pen, when Longfellow said : " If you 
really do not want this incident for a tale, let me 
have it for a poem." So it happened that between 
the years of eighteen hundred and forty-five and 

l^is is il^e.j(jrest priznesZ^vl, tJ;e murimiriTicf 
•pines emd, tije. Ijemloeksy 
Jdesa:cLe(L vSfcl; moss^ ancl in^socmenis ^reeii , 
indisiinet in tlje tvJiJi^i;^;, 

pis^nd. like Druids of eld j-^ 






Senile Ev^ai^eline \i\)ed.y ];is el;i]cl ; aoacl i^ 
pride ^ ilje ^iUe^i 

seven " Evan- 
geline" was 
made a Long- 
fellow legacy 
to the world. 

A letter from 
the young man 
dated May 
fourteenth, 
eighteen hun- 
dr ed and 
twenty-six, 
says : " 1 sail 
for Havre to- 
morrow — on 
board the ship 
Cadmus, Cap- 
tain Allen. Love to all ! Farewell ! " From Havre 
de Grace he writes his mother: "I cannot describe 
my sensations on taking my last look at my native 
land, and my first of a foreign one." 

Many, and full of charming interest, were the 
letters to his family and friends during this first 
trip to Europe. His poem "Castles in Spain" is 




v?aitecL in silenee, 
JVot O'PeTeoine. v>?i-fc^ £^i^j ^i^t siroiig in. tlje. 
i)ovLT of ^lieiioxLj .« 



JcjiPart oeizna. 






r/exd out io t^ee in cL^s of ^cn:e. ! 

full of memory pictures of the eight months spenf 
in that country where he never went again. He 
studied in many lands their native tongue, and came 
in touch with many gifted and famous persons, 
and with earnest, faithful work well qualified him- 
self for his college appointment. On his return 
voyage he wrote : " Travelling has its joys — : but 
happier is he whose heart rides quietly at anchor 
in the peaceful haven of home." 

At twenty-two Professor Longfellow took up 
his residence at Brunswick College and devoted 
himself to the double duty of librarian and teacher. 
He also made time to edit some French and Span- 
ish books, and their worth attracting the attention 
of Professor George Ticknor — who held a like 
position at Harvard — made one incident among 
others that afterwards led to the younger pro- 
fessor succeeding to the elder's chair of languages 
at the Cambridge college. 

However, one of those Bowdoin College days 
tells of all, as follows: '*! rise at six — hear a 
French recitation immediately. At seven I break- 
fast, — master of my time till eleven — when I 
hear a Spanish lesson. After that lunch : — 

Twelve I go into the library till one. Leisure till 
five/' then "a French recitation. At six I take 

/jtaruis nW i^eiasiii/atll/avisJaion^ii; 
Uasties in ^ain ^ noi iLzili of s tone 
J^vh cf vv!i?fte summer elaucls j ancLhloM/n 
Iriio hljis liijhle mist of rij^ine t 



^A/asth 



ffs jcrt. 



I'^^axxi 



E-of. Jfc^ii^W. iLaiijfeJloW VLsan^lS-tt^rlsoT^f^Uci^ 





coflFee: — walk and visit friends till nine: study 
till twelve, sleep till six. Such is my daily routine 
of life." Later on is added : " 1 am more and more 
delighted with the profession I have embraced." 

At twenty-four Henry Longfellow proved him- 
self " no mere book-worm or dry-as-dust scholar. 
His heart was touched by the second daughter of 
his father's friend, Judge Barrett Potter. Mrs. 
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the niece of this 
gentle lady, writes: "The Portland young men 
called Mary Potter's girlhood home 'the nunnery' 
because her stern father kept such strict watch 
over his three beautiful, motherless daughters." 
Another record says of Mary : " Her character and 
person were alike lovely. Under the shadow of dark 
hair, eyes of deep blue lighted a face unusually 

^JbicL sl^e siis ancl ^a^zes at 2ne 

Wifcl/ iljose deep and teizder eye? y 
liike blje stars , so siill ancL saiirrt -Jilce ^ 



:ies 








Voo^jsteziis of. — •mKjels' 







-Si-MTisvvVci, THIkine. 





attractive in expression." If she knew not Greek 

and Latin it seems she did know her mathematics. 

A lover's picture of her appears in these lines : 

The being beauteous, 
Who unto my youth was given, 
More than all things else to love me. 

They were married in September, eighteen 
hundred and thirty-one, and never was wedded 
life happier than theirs in a house still standing 
under its elms in Federal Street, Brunswick. The 
young husband describes his study, to the right of 
the entrance, thus : " The shadow of the honey- 
suckle lies on my study floor, and through the open 
window comes the fragrance of the wild-briar and 
mock-orange: the birds are carolling in the 



ITender - — a^Tid, ^oumx/ - 

andL hri^yij^ amA Jorief. 



T^ ''v,-n^TS»i. — 



JkrTvc^ oft 



xyvofnyc^ 




trees — while the 
murmur of bees, the 
cooing of doves, and 
the whirring of a little 
humming-bird send 
up a sound of joy to 
meet the rising sun." 

Much writing as 
well as professional 
work was done at 
Brunswick until De- 
cember first, eighteen 
hundred and thirty- 
four, when a letter of that date from Josiah Quincy, 
President of Harvard, advised the young man of 
Professor Ticknor's intended resignation from the 
chair of modern languages at Harvard, and that 
inquiries had led the writer to name Professor 
Longfellow for the vacancy. The suggestion was 
made that a year or more in Europe for German 
might be well. 

When advising his father of President Quincy's 
letter, Longfellow writes : " Good fortune has 
come at last, and I shall certainly not reject it." 
The Bowdoin Chair of Modern Languages, held 
for more than five years, was resigned, the attrac- 
tive Brunswick home given up, and April, eighteen 

jBat tlje£ioocl deei^t})roii£l) tlje a^es 

hi^imj in Ijistorie pa^es , 
Mr^ljterj/rov^5 eond c/leaom immortdl, 
MiUBonsiimed ]qy moiij orrasi • 



"^eJ^i 



ormaJxJSaxcfn 



J& 







lipomas Caxl^l&^^^^A^ c/ane /l/elsi; CarZyZt 




hundred and thirty-five, found Longfellow and his 
wife aboard the Philadelphia on his second trip to 
Europe. He left, ready for publication, his two 
volumes of '' Outre-Mer." 

During this foreign visit Professor Longfellow 
and his lovely wife met many brilliant and noted 
persons. A letter from Emerson brought them 
in touch with Thomas Carlyle and his attractive 
wife. Mrs. Longfellow describes this lady as " a 
lovely woman, with very pleasing and simple man- 
ners," and ''also very talented and accomplished." 
Carlyle remembered Emerson's stay with 

^nhm/id<naj5 annals ;, 

iijroi^^ ilje lom/ 

^ered^fter of Ijer S'peeel/ and soi^, 
J^at Ijcflji; its re^s sl/aii east 
lEr(?m porfcals oftlje past. 



' ^^ NvV-* '''.'//>'. ; '■'■ ■ ■ 

^Bjej sl/all all Moom iTLfielcU of Jij^i/-_ 
them as '* a visit of an angel." What Professor 
and Mrs. Longfellow wrote from Northern Europe 
is full of charm and instruction. It was during 
their stay at Rotterdam that the young wife, on 
November twenty-ninth, eighteen hundred and 
thirty-five, was called away, when life was fairest. 
Of her short life Mrs. Higginson writes : " Its 
briefness saddens, till I recall my aunt's successor. 
Then I remember that altho the violet withered 
a lily bloomed in its stead." 

The poet bore his sorrow with a courage born 
of a silent, tender, and religious faith. In ** The 
Footsteps of Angels " are lines on this lost wife : 

With a slow and noiseless footstep 

Comes that messenger divine, 
Takes the vacant chair beside me, 

Lays her gentle hand in mine. 

Even in his sorrow none knew better than he 
that his world's work must be done. The " Psalm 
of Life," written in eighteen hundred and thirty- 
nine, and which Mrs. Julia Ward Howe calls " this 
music so brave, clear, and human," reveals his 
solemn measure of life's worth in these lines : 

Life is real ! Life is earnest ! 

And the grave is not its goal ; 
Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 

Was not spoken of the soul. 

jjiaJl I J;aN?e ns^aofljt tlfat is fear /sari]; J;e; 

3fa>?e nav£fl[t hut i^e iearcled jfrain ? 
lljoi^l^ ilje ireai^ of ti/ese flovJers is 5v?eei to me, 
a Will jfiv^e tl/em all iacli ^d^TL • " 








/aees of fxmili^r friends seemed sirangre;^ 



Therefore he was 
" up and doing," 
studying his Ger- 
man the following 
winter at Heidel- 
berg, where he 
meets with pleas- 
ure the poet Bryant 
among others. 
Later he sees 
Switzerland ; but 
on October eighth, eighteen hundred and thirty- 
six, he sails from Havre for home shores. The 
following December found Professor Longfellow 
in his Kirkland Street rooms at Cambridge, and 
launched in the full tide of his Harvard College 
duties. With such friends as Professor Felton, 
Charles Sumner, Hilliard, Judge Joseph Story, 
and Simon Greenleaf, this Cambridge, still a 
village, had much to offer of brilliant and delight- 
ful associations to the young poet. And 
he, by his refined tastes, sunny man- 
ners, and bright mind, soon became 
a favorite. 

About this time, through Nathaniel 
Hawthorne sending his "Twice Told 

E?r i\je onefaeel looked, for vlas not tl^ere y 
Il/e oYie lov) y^oiee Was 2nuie j 
(0nb^ an zinseen presence filled ilje air^ 
haffled itrf pursuii. 



H^^iJhlj 



oraie. 





Tales " to Longfellow, these two gifted men again 
came together with a friendship to last their lives. 
For little folk the children's Longfellow can 
never be parted from Craigie House. For them 
it stands another shrine to the poet's name and 
ever-present influence. Not its builder, Colonel 
Vassall, of seventeen hundred and fifty-nine, who 
left it for England's sake; nor all the glory or 
gayety given it by being George Washington's 
some-months home; nor all the grand Craigie 
dinners given to princes in high life, have for little 
ones the love-compelling charm it has as "Craigie 
House — The Home of Longfellow." 

^2iee,a^ onee vJitijiiiiyese Walls, 
&ne ^f!/l)(mL memory ofi reealls , 
Jatl/er of Ijis Qouniirff cL\/ielb . 










When left a 
widow without 
much money, 
Mrs. Craigie 
kept a few rooms 
for herself and 
wisely rented the 
others. The 
poet's first call 
at Craigie House 
was on a fine 

><^<>oic><<>cK;><s)o<j>D£><i><^acw>©ooo<iK><^^ su miner aiter- 
noon in eighteen hundred and thirty-seven. He 
went to see a law-student who lived in the south- 
east chamber, but gave it up the following August, 
when Longfellow took this room and the one 
next to it for his bedroom. Mrs. Craigie has been 
described as " sitting in her southeast parlor, in her 
white muslin turban and gray silk gown among her 
window plants and singing birds," and having a 
kindly feeling for the worms of her elm trees. 
But rather an awe-inspiring lady so gowned and 
crowned she seemed to the poet as "she stood 
with her hands crossed behind her, snapping her 
gray eyes, and saying she had resolved to take no 
more students into the house." When he made 



Enjoy tl;e ^princf of Juov^e aJicL olouh^y 

xo some^oocl ax^el lea\?e ii)e res-fe } 
jfor JiiKe v?ill ies^el; il;ee soon il)e -bxuiljf 
ere are no hircls in lasb^eaxs nesi I 



% 



Ai isTicb ai'A^s Kay 




j3;e3iallM?^ of Lure^ij^ie 3-fouse, 




himself known her manner changed, and he adds : 
"She then took me all over the house and showed 
me every room in it." She gave him the rooms 
named. They were cared for by the farmer's wife, 
Miriam — "a pius giantess" who lived in the back 
of the house, and also gave him his meals, but at 
so high a price that she was called " Miriam the 
profit-ess" by the poet's friend, Felton. Long- 
fellow wrote his father: "The new rooms are 
above all praise." 

September twelfth, eighteen hundred and thirty- 
eight,thetlrst mention of "Hyperion" appears in the 
poet's journal. This romance was published the 

clio and do\y/n tljese eeljoir£j stairs ; 
potinded his jnajesiiQ tread 2—^ 






^' 






JLlaiigfelloi^ 






next year, and is said to have much of his own 
life in it — incidents of travel — and its heroine 
the portrait of a lovely girl of nineteen, whom he 
met in Switzerland, and again after her family and 
self had returned to their Boston home, in its 
Mary Ashburton the poet-lover described his future 
wife, Frances Elizabeth, daughter of Mr. Nathan 
Appleton, of Boston. Miss Appleton at twenty- 
five was " a woman of stately presence, cultivated 
intellect, and deep religious feeling. Her calm and 
quiet face at times seemed to make the very air 
bright with its smile." On the first day of college 
vacation, July thirteenth, eighteen hundred and 
forty-three, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow brought 

^4 • yo ome sv?eei name- 

^ y/};ose evfery syjlaiie is a earess 

Would Lest hefii tijee^ lui I eannoi elgoose, , 

fpy^ still iii/e s^m^j 

)Jikmeless or named^^^iUhai^ loMiness . 



irs 




"lije Mi &lo^k an tl/e ^ia^i 

her a bride to the 
Craigie House rooms. 
Two weeks later a 
visit was made to his 
parents at the Port- 
land home. They 
then went to the 
Appleton's summer 
home at Nahant, and 
afterwards to other 
relatives of his wife, 
who lived in an old- 
fashioned country 

house at Pittsfield. Under its poplars the poet 
writes of it in ''The Old Clock on the Stairs": 

Somewhat back from the village street 
Stands the old-fashioned country-seat. 
Across its antique portico 
Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw. 

And of the clock he adds : 

Half-way up the stairs it stands, 

And points and beckons with its hands. 

The April before this holiday Longfellow wrote 
his father of Mrs. Craigie : "She is determined to 
die as she has lived, pretty much her own way.' 

JJjere £roicp5 of merr^ e^ildven jpl^ecL^ 
J^ere^ozcbhs md iwaidens dreamii^ sirred} 
@ yreeious Ijours I ®cioLd.en jpriine , 
jflzhl e^luettee cf lo\^e and tiim I 



ife®M(3'J/)cieoMt^e<Stai 



aira 








Within a few days of 

this time she went the 

way of all mortals to 

her long home, and her 

Cambridge house, with 

the land next, was 

bought by Mr. Appleton 

for his daughter. 

Therefore, their vacation 

over, the professor and 

his bride returned to 

the Craigie House, 

thenceforth the home 

of Longfellow. 

In eighteen hundred and forty-one 

"Excelsior" was written on the back of a 

letter from Charles Sumner, who was ever 

held as among the nearest and dearest of 

friends. Charles, Longfellow's soldier son 

of eighteen hundred and sixty-one, was 

born June ninth, eighteen hundred and 

forty-four, and the poet's journal records 

the coming of a second son into his happy 

home in eighteen hundred and forty-five 

L thus: '^Thanksgiving Day Sumner 



C'^A.oij^ y2^^--/^ 




ere a siao: OrueneT^ecl on J^ic 
JFox e^es )A?ovdcL iis ligljt ^ 

pi/iiie on auv moT^al sicjLjb. 



C/^axJes yu2 



zormeiL 




A>t vOl^i 



zsverei 



Corm£^ ol) coiae \vHlj me j ^j^ L 




dined with us. We 
drank the baby's 
health under the title 
of Chevalier Neu- 
kome, on account of 
his being a new- 
comer and a great 
musician — in his 
way." This was 
baby Ernest, who 
appears in Longfel- 
low's poem, " To a 
Child," as 

Dear child ! how radiant on thy mother's knee, 
With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles, 
Thou gazest at the painted tiles. 

And of him the journal notes: "Feb. 8, 1847.* 
Earnest took his first walk in Beacon Street, and ^ 
made patriotic struggles to enter John Hancock's 
premises. How splendidly he looked in his white 
cocked-up hat and plumes, his blue coat and red ' 
gaiters." So spoke the battle- blood of old Peleg , 
Wadsworth in these great-grandsons. Longfellow 
loved his boys ; but oh, his very heart went out 
to " little girls." Indeed, he once confessed to the 

jfin ai20el Wrtl? 2^ radiant fa.ee. ^ 
.-jtho^e a cradle herd io looii^ 

Seemed l/is ovjia. ima^e {ijere io ixaee 
^s in tlje W^-bers of a lorook . 






i 






o oooooo 



\ 



\ 










poet Lowell, "I 
like little girls 
the best." Of a 
daughter his jour- 
nal notes: *'Oct. 
30, 1847. Little 
Fanny christened. 
She looked charm- 
ingly, and behaved 
well throughout." 
The following 
September is 
added of this 
baby girl these 
words: "Our little 
child was buried 
to-day." 

The room was full 

of angels where 

she lay, 
And when they had 

departed she was 

gone. 

That the little 
sons were well 
beloved, and went 



1 sioool on tl/e ]jrid^e ai Tmdnio/lj'b ; 

Jlsihe clocks v)ere siril6.l^ ilje};oiii: 
Jlnd tye. -moon, rose o^er tl/e eiiyj 
JBeljincUl/e cUrk eijvixe^ iovidr , 




ZDray^iru^-y^ooia^ at 6r3igie.'Mause-^ % x> 



to school, we know from the journal's date of 
"April 10, 1850. The boys' first day at school. 
I took them down to the old house under the 
Washington elm, and left them sitting in their little 
chairs among the other children. God bless the 
little fellows ! " The next date is a happy one : 
''February 22d, 1851. Washington's birthday 
and the christening of our little daughter; — the 
brightest, gayest of girls." On going to college 



ll]ed<i:cLil)e hells on &lj}^isi2nzsJ^^ 
^eir old-^familidJ:: carols fh^f 
jfmcL \Oil(i and sWee^ 

(^md<(2e on. eari^ j^ood-y^ill ioxixeix I 

(SijilsiTti^^ Belli 




^. 



iQOZ' 



)eiie 



(i "to 22^ ^ea^^ejiL^ ^uesJTj 




the following March 
twelfth, Professor 
Longfellow met a 
telegraph boy whose 
message read : *Toiir 
mother died to-day 
suddenly." Before 
midnight he was in 
Portland, and his 
journal notes : " In 
the room where I 
took my last leave of 
her lay my mother, 
to welcome and take 
leave of me no more. I sat all night alone with 
her — so tranquil had been her death. A sense of 
peace came over me." 

And so the shadows softened until by light 
of Christmastide, eighteen hundred and fifty-one, 
he made this entry : " in the evening we had a 
Christmas tree and a children's ball. Little A — 
ran about the lighted rooms in great glee, with her 
red cheeks and bright blue eyes, much caressed." 
Next June ninth is another record of fun and frolic 
enjoyed by these Longfellow little folk and their 
friends: "Charles' birthday. He is eight years 




JH^ erraiad 15 not l)eai^jhut Xiife , ^'^e saicZ ; 
ytncl ere JL d.Yi5\^ered , loasBiMCf out of ^ifflgi 9 







JIElltTLV^O OcL 



Jljere fill upon ilje Ijouse a suclcUrL^flocjti j 

old to-day; had 

a charming" party 

of children, wild 

with play among 

the haycocks; 

all ending with 

a supper, and a 

dance in the 

drawing-room." 

On the birth of 

his daughter, 

Edith, and the death of the beautiful wife of the 

poet Lowell, Longfellow, in eighteen hundred and 

fifty-three, wrote "The Two Angels," one verse of 

which follows: 

Two angels, one of Life and one of Death, 
Passed o'er our village as the morning broke ; 

The dawn was on their faces, and beneath, 
The sombre houses hearsed with plumes of smoke. 

Of these verses the poet said : " I seem to see the 
moon over his house now, as on that early autumn 
morning when I walked back and forth in the west 
chamber. Then the poem came to me." Long- 
fellow and Lowell enjoyed and suffered much 
together. But the air is clear in the noting, 
*' April 1 , 18?8. April Fool's day, and the children 

Ly&Uio Ijintfljejfons az^ou s2o\^l^ laass- 
-^^Si32^ ^im tlje song aftije^reen moxa^^^,^ 
-cNStm/' J/ii?i tlje jTtystieal sorwfoftj/eJIexrL, 
Jhld iije seey^ei; tJ^Bdi harffles 

our zittnos-i seeking' 





Jf/ese areiTiy tljree Jittle^irJs ^ 



all alert with fun ; the little girls trying to make 
papa one, and getting caught in the process," 
On the following December thirty-first is a happy 
record of a "children's party; E— disguised as the 
Old Year in great beard and boots; little A— as 
the New Year, with a wreath on her head." 
Again there is a flood of sunshine in a letter 

Urom. iny aiuch^ i see in. blje iaoi^^ii^ljbf L 



J)e^eenclii^ ilje iroacL i/ail siafr 
(0/ra\?eJlieey and hi^iglpi^ Jlllecfra y 
^ncL JE cMiirj vliilj cf olden }j2^ir. 




jfijohee cfslumher and. of f[r^a]ais ^ 

Jdut nooxL aoni nz^lj-b iije jodjnbinQ teams 







'Jjtie.WsfsicUjbin., jSrvidhi,u^j2£a.ss. 



a few months later that the poet writes to a little 
girl from Nahant, "where," he says/i am passing 
the summer with my three little girls. The oldest 
is about your age : — Her name is Alice : I never 
forget that. She is a nice girl, and loves poetry — . 
The second is Edith, with blue eyes and beautiful 
golden locks — . She is a very busy little woman, 
and wears grey boots. The youngest is Allegra ; 
which, you know, means merry: and she is the 
merriest little thing you ever saw — singing an 

jOtcrp render ilje^freacb oaks^ tljst tljro\^ 
dki^les afl^lfk axicL sl/aole JoeloiA?^ 

jAid ^aif e^eeel h/ icain. and syiiae p 
ji;e i\ai Jfoxse joranees an. tije sz^xl . 




3ikr^ a Jaart^em. aloft in -hlje loelprf B^oij 





J^azd. J^^'exQ-^'sJ^cLz. 



lllXorilj 



laughing all over the house. These are my three 
little girls, and Mr. Read has painted them all in one 
picture, which I hope you will see some day. I do 
not say anything about the two boys. They are such 
noisy fellows it is of no use to talk about them." 
It was Charles Sumner who decided on the 
title " The Wayside Inn " (at Sudbury) for 
: Longfellow's group of stories published in 
k eighteen hundred and sixty-three. 'Taul 
, Revere's Ride," however, — one which no 
boy fails to recite sometime in his school- 
days, — was written three years earlier. 
The ninth of July, eighteen hundred 

^o^^er as a ^^ndH^i;, 
&iie;, ifhy l2^~n.d. , 

^ridX on t^e apposite ^ 

JRea^dj^ to -ricLz 




J\jmilefa<se — Ixook^ at 7n£ Jram tlje y/^a^ll^ 



and sixty-one, 
there came a break 
in Longfellow's journal, 
and it was truly a shadow of 
the break in his heart, and one 
beyond the mending of time. That day his wife, 
sitting in the library with her little girls, was seal- 
ing some small packages of their curls. From a 
lighted match on the floor her thin summer clothing 
took fire and burned with such quick and dread- 
ful force as to end her life. Three days later, 

vJ J^e^e round, its ijeai, 

l5je m^l/t-lajmi^ easts 3<}/alo^ioak l^ljt . 

and a souL more Wljiie 
^e^er i^roii^lj 2nar^vj:doiti cffire v(?a5 led. 

Ao iis irejpose , 



Hye 6:izass ^ S'3^\D , 









.3ia\}ijnj joui all to hei , il^en m jnvy' -bziim. 
Jl Will lie (io\^n bxlcL sleep as sozmcl as t^ey 



her wedding day 
eighteen years be- 
fore, they took her 
to Mount Auburn, 
and it is recorded 
that "some hand had 
placed a wreath of 
orange-blossoms on 
her beautiful head." 
Early in life Long- 
fellow said: "With 
me all deep feelings 
are silent ones." 
And only his own 
passing "Into the 
Silent Land" re- 
vealed this " cross of snow " in these lines on the 
loss of his wife : 

There is a mountain in the distant West 
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines 
Displays a cross of snow upon its side. 
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast. 

No doubt all his children were very dear to him, 
but henceforth his three motherless girls became 
more his companions, friends, and equally the light 




e"i LIS he vBjhieni ! il/ese. severe ajfjieiions 
^oh fxom i^e ^rozincL e^i-ise ^ 
Hut ofteivhiines aehshial hene diet ions 
szi^me ilfis darK clisauise. . 



_f^siMia- 



:t'i.ojn- 



Gljarl^s jAJxongfellov), 

Jxievitmdjxb V-^. -Kass . (?av^alry, J864 
and life of his home. 
And it is of them on 
the following De- 
cember twenty-fifth 
the poet notes: "The 
dear little girls had 
their Christmas-tree 
last night; and an 
unseen presence 
blessed the scene." 
Even a year later the 
Christmas date re- 
veals a heart of sor- 
row: "December 2?, 
1862. *A merry Christmas' say the children; but 
that is no more for me. Last night the little girls 
had a pretty Christmas-tree." In 1859 they made 
the tender, touching inspiration of that gem of 
poems, "The Children's Hour." Its first verse is: 

Between the dark and the daylight, 
W^hen the night is beginning to lower, 

Comes a pause in the day's occupations, 
That is known as the Children's Hour. 

A letter of the following December proves the 
poet a patriot by more than his pen; he writes: 




jQ/e \^ou2ided.pro2n tlje Jbatiie-piain, 
^xicL like iije \92d,er5 flo\ff 

&ajne a dull ^^oiee of vS'oe 





And io ilje tender Ijeaxt and ira^?e 

5l;e tribute of t^is >^er5e . . 

i " My oldest boy, not 
yet twenty, is a lieu- 
tenant of cavalry in 
the Army of the 
Potomac. In the last 
battle on the Rapidan 
he was shot through 
both shoulders, and 
had a very narrow 
escape of it. He is 
now at home and 
doing very well. 
^ Your lotus pillow is 
now giving comfort to a younger head than 
mine, — the young officer's. The two anxious 
journeys to bring him back — with watching and 
waiting — have not done me much good/' 

After a period of work and quiet a visit was 
made to the old world. From England to Rome 
was passed quaint old Nuremberg, of which the 
poet wrote some charming verses in 1848. But 
at this time Longfellow writes of Europe to 
Charles Sumner: " March 9, 1868. We are going 
lat the end of May. I do not like breaking up of 



^ / v?J;a"tplea5acn-fc ^isiojns ]gd:unb me 
jfis Iga^^^e upon ilje sea / 
Jnll ij^e old rom&.niie legend 
^nll Tny dreams ^ eome Jiaek to me 



Jije S&txe-ir of -Hhe &e& 








Aaxis (^ael/s 



^Ihiree^ ^iixei: 



lome, but 1 suppose it is for the best. I need a 
good shaking up, and expect to get it." On May 
twenty-third a brilliant dinner-party was given by 
Mr. James T. Fields, his publisher, to the poet, 
whose journal notes the event thus: **A parting 
dinner at Fields'. Verv beautiful with flowers and 
all pleasant things. Holmes read a charming poem, 
and we enjoyed ourselves extremely." 

May twenty-seventh Longfellow, with a happy 
party of his children and friends, sailed from New 
York, aboard the steamer " Russia " for Liverpool. 
Thence to the English lakes country — a writer's 
paradise — and afterwards to Cambridge, of old 
England, where, June sixteenth, in the presence 



lau2:eai^ of tlje Cfejxile erafty — 

in ^uae Jvlios- ^d<xic^ acrid id^vLC/ljeJ. . 




%' 






J_oe^i (jorzier ^ Weshitixmsier ®H]oh 



%y 





of a large and distinguished gathering of people, 
the poet was given the honorary degree of Doctor 
of Laws. Hearty and long was the cheering that 
greeted his appearance in the red robes of an 
LL.D. From Oxford, England, he also received 
the same degree. Indeed, from England's queen 
down to the sons of her soil, our poet and 
familiar friend to every household had endless 
honors showered upon him, and now his marble 
bust in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey 
marks literary America in England's Hall of 
Fame. 

laexrtlest soull i^ov? ara^eiou^ ]gov) Joemcjjn. 
reaiiijes tl/roucY]/ our iroublecL life iljsi ^Poieeoftljme^ 
lei \!)itlj a svv'eeiaiess horn of J/appier si^eres, 
lai Wizis ani unarms ^tJ/^.'^Jciitdk^ se^m aifeers^ 
msilje vlildesh \^oe B^ncLsbd^YS ti/e hiUeoresi tears. 



•^- 



Otem il/omljts aond as^juljkom tl)y soul zorise, 



V 



u 







Longfellow and his party then went up the 
Rhine to Switzerland, and on to the fair Italian 
land, of which he calls its Como country "Sweet 
Vision," and one verse of his " Cadenabbia" tells 
how fair it appeared to him : 

1 ask myself, Is this a dream ? 

Will it all vanish into air ? 
Is there a land of such supreme 

And perfect beauty anywhere ? 

Its literary inspiration fell into his lines on 
"Dante," "Beatrice," "The Old Bridge at Flor- 
ence," and other poems. 

From this dreamland to Florence and on to 
Rome, where, with Mr. G. P. A. Healy, the artist, 

TD/ws in t]ye JoosoiTL of a eloud offio\iexs,. 

IkdAeo §f^^i huAi me. 1 3^m ohL, 

iiyPe eentLixies old.l^hniim/^ foot of stone 



rezLCa. 





©o®®©©e, 



Jyl \^]tj2d \^d<sh , aerial space 
^hines ilge ii^iji upon ty^jfaee . 



;l JayJoj 



he made an inter- 
esting call on the 
Abbe' Liszt at the 
Convent of Santa 
Francesca in the 
Forum. The door 
of the apartment 
was opened to 
them by the great 
musician himself, 
" Holding high in 
his hand a candle." 
What a flashlight 
of master minds 
that wax-light 
must have shown! 
By the poet's re- 
quest the painter put the Abbe's part of it on canvas, 
and this still hangs in the Craigie House library. 

September first, eighteen hundred and sixty- 
nine, dates a letter in which the poet says: 
"How glad I am to be at homel" Once more 
in his sunny study where books abound and the 
fine, speaking faces of Emerson and Hawthorne 
and Sumner look out of their frames upon the 

e)iill X Ijeajrd tJ^ose m^cjie xiLLtmoers 
_^s iljey loud proclaimed liije flicilji 

ncL stolen jnajce^es of- tl/e jniahi^ 



ij 



_D/e Ji>elfrY «bJsTziae& 



Jozzr iy tlje oloek ! and ^eir oaoij (h^ ; 

— Fwz: ^ the. Qlotli. 




^Lan^ffelloy^'s Study Jxom. 1$^H- 



peerless genius of their no less peerless friend ! 
He is now, at sixty-two, snow-crowned above his 
massive brow, the beard full and pure white about 
his fine, fresh-colored face, and from the eyes of 
blue falls the fair light of a sweet and gentle soul; 
and thus he was, by rich use of rich gifts and 
heaven's grace, a poet. 

Longfellow's great heart went out to little 
children ; in simplicity and innocence he was one 
of them. That is why they loved him and made 
him their king and gave him his " splendid ebon 
throne" — for so he called their gift to him on 

(2)a(ily as sort\& old. inediaa'^dl Izrd^hi; 

^a^ed. ai ii;2 otitis ]ge eoulcl no longer iy^ieMj 

So 1 loeljolcL iljese hooks ujoon. iiljeir sijeLf^ 

yiv oxna,jvh&2vb3 and arms of ohljei: cla^sj^ 

ior tJ/gr remind me jf itiy otljejr selfj _ — 




ooKs 





Some, -bo me^ ^ ^/e, e^xidirerL ! 



his seventy-second birthday. On a brass plate 
beneath its cushion is inscribed: 

TO 

THE AUTHOR 

OF 

THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH 

THIS CHAIR MADE FROM THE WOOD OF THE SPREADING 
CHESTNUT TREE ' IS PRESENTED AS AN EXPRESSION 
OF GRATEFUL REGARD AND VENERATION BY 

THE CHILDREN OF CAMBRIDGE 

WHO WITH THEIR FRIENDS JOIN IN BEST WISHES 

AND CONGRATULATIONS 

ON 

THIS ANNIVERSARY 

February 27th, 1879 

Carved about the seat are these lines from 

" The Village Blacksmith " : 

And children coming home from school 

Look in at the open door ; 
They love to see the flaming forge, 

JnncL -bhe aTAesizoxis iljai -pe2fj)lexecL jne. 

oxne iroine^ (0 ye al^ilclrejn ! 

-JmcL \A?J;ii>pejf xzl jrtiy ear 
;afr -blje-Joircls actxd. t^e Winds aoce sin£fm^ 
JizL yozir suntvy ainwsfoljejre. - 



,->^ 




yozir 



'7 







^e Sjpy^ea.diiiCj Qljeshiuzi Ticee. 



And hear the bellows roar, 
And catch the burning sparks that fly 
Like chaflf from a threshing-floor. 

The chair keeps its honored place by the poet's 
study hearth-stone ; and by the kindly good-will 
of his daughter, Miss Alice Longfellow, children 
come every Saturday afternoon to see this Craigie 
House study, where his ever-present influence is 
as music in the air. A few lines of his poem 
" From My Arm-Chair " will best tell the happi- 
ness it gave their "king." 

-Jrtm JL a -ki:^ ; i};aii JL sijould c?all m^ av)iL 

&x Jjy vi2^ai jreasozi^ or vi?i/at J^i^ijt define ^ 
Can JL joroel&jytLJt Jnijne f 






~ 3P^^^=fi*'*^ 



Ixciyi. 



IV^ ^rm. C^jiSx. 






-~rlsiiy a lesson , deejo concl lonq ) 





-:m 



Only, perhaps, by right divine of song 

It may to me belong ; 
Only because the spreading chestnut tree 

Of old was sung by me. 

On a bookcase just back of this chair stands a 
water-color of the spreading chestnut tree. Thus 
enthroned was the children's Longfellow then ; 
and in the hearts of the children of men his reign 
will be forever. 

About the last letter the poet ever wrote was 
one of thanks to a little girl for a birthday remem- 
brance. Two days later he delighted the hearts 
of four Boston school-boys by showing them his 
study, the river-view from its windows, and writing 
his name in their albums. 

-Jl/£?a Jjast leeiT a Qenerozis eirOeyi ; 
1 can ^i\)e. ijjee Jozii a ^onej, - 

jioxe iijan iljis }^ ti^^jmane. reziiijtids ine. 
&f tijree fariench, all tirue and. tried ; 
'jmoL tJ;2vt Jfia^me like jtia^c^ie. hinds me 
Glozei: ; elose-jc to iljy side . « 




Jbar frojmt^e ^^^orlcL eoaoLiioise v)iRineclzba.te-^ 



^, ^ y^-^ 


i^l 




■I 






3**< tp • 






4, ' - * 






■^\ 




• laiiiiii'i ■^"- 4'll 


.^.\. 


; *i\' , 


Z. ^T^wiiKa.. fir 




JlLGn^;/yiov7i (§l;a^*^VvSlk 



On March fifteenth, eighteen hundred and eighty- 
two, " The Bells of San Bias " — his poem — rang 
out the last notes of the poet's earthly music in 

these lines : 

Out of the shadows of night 

The world moves into light ; 

It is daybreak everywhere ! 

And so it was for the children's Longfellow on 
March twenty-fourth, eighteen hundred and eighty- 
two, when the Cambridge bells tolled the sorrowful 
story to all the world ; for the poet's sweet, full, and 
blameless earthly life was spent. Three days later, 
under the gently falling snow, they carried him ^\ 

1 l^eard iJ^e trailinei efBocments of ilje ^mljij 
(fvv^eep tj^ronfflj ^ezmdoclole J/aJJs 

X s^v) Ijex saJole skirts ^llpcincjed. v/iiih lic/iji 
Jcrom t^e. celestial WaJla / 





fcJns^ in our io'\^er sloof 
We raiw o^er m^b^II ^ncL roof 

to Mount Au- 
burn. Many 
and touching 
are the pretty 
stories told of 
Longfellow's 
devotion to 
children, and 
their love for 
him; yet per- 
haps no one 
of them all 
is so sweetly 
solemn as 
that given by 
the Reverend 
W.H. Savage 
in the Janu- 
ary eighteen 
hundred and 
ninety-five "Arena'': "*Was that God?' asked a 
little boy on whose forehead the aged poet had 
left a kiss, as he went away after a call at a friend's 
house. And none of the boy's elders felt quite 
ready to answer in the negative, for just then God 
seemed not far away from every one of them." 



War }/?d<rninQ's acnd our com^l&imis j 
round, ahoivb us tljere 
e. )/0]jiie clones filled tfye air, 
Jiike tl/e y/^ljiie, soizl^ of i^e sd^inbs 



j&)ox ^ sad. yizcm.3jni'b\r 
jj/roi^i/ all iije doBi and ^eai 




Jurjis i)aek y^iilj loleeding J^eei, y _ 
^cfoito -blje simple ij^oug^ 

JSrxieL ihai icermaYierijh still : . 

Christus :Jrt.JUYsi/e2rY 

0/ & 3f 



V 




^^^iS^I^t^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 





017 197 318 1 ^ 



